The Observer
by Person With Many Aliases
Summary: The Timeless Temple has crumbled away, yet the rings remain, half of which have disappeared. At the same time, a woman finds herself in this isolated space, with neither complete memories or a body. Yet compelled by some unknown force, she pursues the missing artifacts across the strangest alterations of time and space yet, while new legendary figures and spells are at her disposal
1. Prologue: From Nothing

Preface: This story may not be pleasing to everyone as the narrative continues to take liberties. However, I was uncomfortable leaving this tale in the confines of my mind perpetually. It likely will not be my most well-crafted of stories, but I think it is better to remain in practice where possible, as possible.

A thread on Spacebattles also contains this story, and commentary or active discussion can be posted there as well.

* * *

_You can't hear me. Or speak. Or feel. Anything except that immolation._

_Do you feel it? At least you get to live. What a reward! To remain when all humanity was rendered fuel._

_But it is not to be. So now you're here, burning._

_But this can be corrected. There's work to be done, and spare meat being left around._

_I'll be seeing you soon, amid those patchwork vortexes. We'll all finally be waking up then._

* * *

And when she awoke, the only thing she could register was pain.

To spend an eternity in agony, only to reemerge into reality. The only thing residual would have been the trauma.

The stone on her skin like coals. The fresh air in her lungs like knives. The starlight in the distance crashing into her irises like hail. The silence slamming into ears like bricks.

She lay there, not quite like an eternity, registering too much, her heart racing, eyes fluttering, breath ragged,inwards and outwards, without any tempo. Too much. Too much to do much more than lie there, nerves firing, arms and legs flailing against the rock and, exhaling a strangled scream.

Who knows how long she lay there.

But eventually all things must pass. She became accustomed to the everything. Her breath finally evened out, and with an exhausted flicker, she could finally stare upward at the black sky.

Was it a sky? The stars were in the distance, but closer still were jagged rock, floating in a void. A place where even laws like gravity were nonexistent.

Where is she?

What is all this?

Why is she here? Someone like …

Like …

Like …?

She rolls, ignoring something wrong about her as something more important takes the forefront of her mind. She arches, forehead against the marble as she presses down, and brings a hand against a temple.

The 'who' is on the tip of her tongue, just out of reach, but it's like trying to grasp something in the darkness. Where do you even turn to, to begin?

She tries, but she can't recall. The freshest memory is the terror, the agony. More sensation than recollection.

"Nngggh…!"

She hisses at her ineptitude. She wants to remember, but she can't. She has to surrender, for now.

Rolling back to sit on her shins, she looked down at herself. Suddenly, embarrassment overtakes her, and she looks around, confirming she is alone. There is nothing on her but skin, and she wraps an arm around herself in a pathetic attempt at coverage. When she does, that other wrong thing makes itself known because she's suddenly acutely aware of something not listening to her commands.

She looks. Her left arm is unaccompanied. Nothing protrudes from her right shoulder. It is stunningly incomplete. Not even molded with clean skin, her right side, down to the hip, is a roiling mess of red tissue at war with islands and jagged inlets of unblemished pale skin.

She knows she should have two arms - that she should not look like this - but the knowledge feels only clerical. She can only stare at the lack, press a hand against the scar and feel its unnatural warmth.

How long did she sit there, registering her incompleteness?

But eventually she had to stand up and take her measure of whatever silent prison she was in.

Under her feet was the remains of some sort of temple. It was a great marble stairway surrounded by the floating ruins of its stone foundations, aloft in nothing. Much of it was cracked, but even then, what smooth surfaces remained were pristine. The width of the steps and the landing she was on was a testament to its original majesty. She was a speck on a polished platform that could have held a house.

Looking down, where the steps continued to widen outwards, she saw nothing at the end, but the vast expanse she would likely fall off from, never to return.

That meant the only path forwards in her investigation would be up, where the steps would narrow towards that strange, toppled pillar in the distance.

It was slow going. Her body felt fresh and unused. The muscles were resistant and her lungs were stiff. She swallowed air and pushed onwards, struggling to stay upright where her balance was shot to hell.

At the top was a throne, hewn in hard edges from the same marble, and the most pristine thing in the whole place.

She stared at its construction, feeling strangely awed by the stone seat. But it lasted for a second, overcome instead by some confusing combination of curiosity and desperate relief as she saw something lying on them.

"...Rings?"

Her first words.

Five golden bands, undecorated and innocuous, lying in a group atop the throne. The first thing akin to a possession.

Reaching forward, she grasped them, and let them roll about in the palm of her hand.

Rings. Why are they here? Why are there five?

She looked down at these things to hold, silver hair spilling past her neck. She was suddenly overcome by an urge to keep them safe. She had no bag, no pocket to safekeep them. But there were five of them. A perfect number.

It was humiliating to not have a second hand to perform this simple operation. She was forced to kneel next to the throne, and use it like a bench to hold the rings, while she clenched each one between her fit them around each digit of her left hand, until they were all matched. A relief filled her, for some reason.

She wouldn't lose them, now. And these bands-

These rings suddenly filled her with strength she didn't realise she had lost. A vessel being refilled with vitae.

She took a shuddering breath and couldn't help but rise to her feet, smoothly and gracefully. She felt she was beginning to remember something now. About…

Enacting a mystery. The correct mechanisms to bring forth an unknown as a means of power. Countless methods by which to do so.

She could do this? When was this possible?

She stared at her hand, and somehow realised everything, even the rings, were incomplete. How? It was not five. There were more. A metaphysical tug on her fingers told her the rings were seeking.

Her eyes widened, and somehow she knew-

Five heights to scale. At the top of each…

A tower in a land of towers. Excess.

A fortress rising above a churning sea of mud. Fantasy.

An endless path to a suspended court. Zeal.

A huddle of slums around a pillar of light. Desperation.

A… a mountain… alone... in the snow… Sullenness.

_I must go._

The thought hit her so suddenly she took a step back.

Go? Now?

But she looked around her. Where else would she go? How would she go?

_But I must go. My incompleteness…_

Alone? What could she possibly accomplish?

_Alone, if I must. But I must go._

A mystery was on the tip of her tongue. She only need to gesture, and then…

To there. Anywhere. It would be better than this. To other lands. To other people.

The tremulous thoughts shook her, shook her until all she could do was shut her eyes, and breathe deep. Count backwards from ten.

She doesn't know how, but she knows she was raised to be better than this.

As she reopens her eyes, she turns and looks forward, from the throne and into the great expanse, features set and firm. She needs to prepare what is necessary to proceed, and then...

"I am not going to stand here, doing nothing."

Her voice is dry, still untested. But it is strong.

"I will go. Because I decide to."


	2. America 1: Forest of Fire-Forged Steel

Word of thanks to my friend, who collaborated and encouraged me with this project.

* * *

She stood at the bottommost landing of the stairs, where there would be as much space possible. It took many loosened and sharp stones, but with enough time, she had carved a circle, scrawled with instructions biding reality cast her forth to a place of her choosing. All that was needed now was to follow the calling in her heart to activate it.

The enactment of a mystery requires the separation of common sense from reality.

One, or zero. One, or off. I can, or cannot. These rulings must be overturned and mislabelled, so that the improbable can become the instrumental.

For one of her distinction, this meant dislodging her own common sense. Then, those circuits hiding in her body would be roused, and told how to pervert laws. This would be performed by envisioning a shock so powerful the mind would be rattled in its bone cage. And in those few seconds of disorientation…

She only needed a blink of an eye to recall the agony, the weightlessness under her feet as she was inverted, pulled upwards into the burning hell, to feel her flesh melt from her bones, forever and ever and ever-

Mystery was enacted.

She muttered something archaic under her breath, almost white noise were it not parsed.

Around her, the scratchings in the floor grew bright, and she stood in a pillar of light, stretching up into the darkness, like a tunnel.

And then she began to fall upwards.

Her breath hitched, remembering yet again the last time this happened.

"No! Wait!" She whimpered to nothing, as she kicked at it. She wasn't ready for this to happen. It was too soon. She hadn't even done anything worthwhile with her life yet, so short as it was.

"No! Stop! I can't! Not again!" She screamed, and she recalled a cavern. A group below her, staring, disbelieving.

And a man, with his smile-

"Someone! Help-"

She was pulled away from the temple ruins, and thrown through the stars, towards another world.

* * *

Apparently it was a cliche to have your back turned to the door so you can see the magnificence of the city through the window of the office. But who could resist, especially when the lights were turned out.

It was architectural magnificence, to see one skyscraper after another, all of them aglow with yellow and white light through their windows. In the streets, cars of every model. It was a thrumming coalescence of everything good about humanity. Down every path a neighbour, in every room, food and shelter.

What need did people need of stars now? In this era, they had become their own wondrous constellation.

This complex web… he could go on about its beauty forever, had there not been a knock at his door.

"Sir?"

"Entre-vous!" He jokingly called out.

Ms. Sarah bowed slightly in deference before walking inside. The woman had the unfortunate handicap of being a Negro, but such deficiencies could be overlooked thanks to her sheer studiousness and competence.

"Sir, your prediction, it panned out," Sarah said, getting straight to the point, as she handed over a folder.

"Did it?" He murmured, half in amusement, half in surprise. He had been warned, but he always hoped otherwise.

But looking at the graphs, he saw the statistics agree with his African assistant, even if she wasn't sure what she was looking at. The other analysts were told it was all just recording equipment, but how could you explain the functions of a Bounded Field to them?

"The readings from the graphs spiked just an hour ago. At your word, we can mobilise any asset you want, including… well, the girl in your employ."

He leaned back and considered. It was tempting to use her, true. But at this stage, without knowing the enemy's abilities, it would be like using a sledgehammer on a fly. Too much chaos for too much of an uncertain pay off. No, he would trust in the power of delegation, as all wise men did.

"Alert the Security Bureau. Have a general APB out for a woman with white hair, who is capable of paranormal feats. Apprehend or terminate with prejudice. But if she is accompanied by another who doesn't seem to be local, have the officers on site hang back, and return a report directly to me."

Ms. Sarah saluted, and marched back out, and he turned back to his city.

So it began, as was forewarned. The interloper coming for his prize. Well, magus or no magus, her time was over. A good old publicly announced execution would prove who was most worthy of the ring, when the time came.

* * *

**Patchwork I - America, 1933: Beacon of Bloodstained Progress**

**Compression Factor: B**

**Present Assets: ?**

**Present OpFor: ?**

**Present Chaldean Assets: N/A**

* * *

It was a murmuring that brought her slowly back to her senses. Shifting, she felt something under her shift with her weight, supporting her body in a manner to make her comfortable, while something soft had been thrown over top of her.

"...h jeez, what was I thinking… thinking I'm sort of Florence Nightingale, picking up every stray I find out of the goodness of my heart..."

As she opened her eyes blearily, she saw a blue blob pace back and forth, worrying with a woman's voice.

Inexplicably, she was just about ready to open with a tirade about useless noise, useless worries, and useless exertions, but she only managed to get as far as, "nnngh". Was this going to happen every time she used that Mystery to travel? To awake like a newborn every time?

"Oh, you're awake!" The blob approached, and as her vision slowly adjusted itself, she found herself face to face with a classic blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty in a slim sky-coloured dress, kneeling at her bedside.

She squinted quizzically at this figure, vaguely registering this was probably the first human being she had met … ever, really.

"Can you understand me? Are you able to talk? Just… I don't know, blink if you have-"

"I'm fine," she groused, the patronising more than her own energy motivating her to sit up in the bed. Looking down, she found her formerly naked body now clad in a long, button-up shirt, though the right sleeve still lacked an occupant as it awkwardly flopped against her side.

"Well, you say you're fine, but you landed on the roof of my apartment, naked, when I was just out for a smoke, so… I'd say you're more lucky," the blonde half-explained, half-excused. "And your injuries… you were still bleeding when I found you!"

"I was hurt?"

She began to examine herself, somewhat blankly. A ritual like that shouldn't have left any damage… she was better than that, and it wouldn't make any sense…

"Yes, your forearm was bloody as hell. The sleeve's covering it, but…"

As the girl trailed off, she looked down at her remaining limb, and indeed, her gauze covered hand was poking out through the end of the left sleeve.

It was only a moment's glance before paranoia made her thrust her hand out before grab her hostess by the wrist to drag her down to her, letting her come face to face with her own furious and frantic glare.

"My rings! Where are they!? Did you take them from me!?"

Her bandaged hand was wrapped only by linen, and there was no sight of the brass loops that should have sat snug ahead each of her knuckles. Without them, she was truly naked. Those were her own. Anything else put on her was at the will of others, and they could just be as easily stripped away.

"Where are they!?"

The blonde woman tried to pull back, even with her guest holding fast with such desperation that newly-awakened girl was being half pulled from the bed.

"Stop it, you're resting! They were bloody and in the way of the bandages! I had to wash them!"

"Give them back!" She hissed. "Give them back, I need them-"

She tried to pull the blonde in, but really ended up dragging herself forward, and unfortunately, off the bed. With a yelp, she slammed into the wood floor. Despite the small drop, her condition and her lack of preparation left her sprawled out, having had the wind knocked out of her. She coughed, as she forced herself to her knees and one hand in an attempt to rise. It was not the body holding her back, unfortunately, but rather her swimming vision and throbbing head that kept her balance shot to hell.

The woman's expression changed instantly, furrowed brow loosening to widen her eyes in shock and concern as she knelt down to hoist her charge back to her feet. The one armed girl was eased back onto the bed, while the blonde held her hands out in a placating gesture.

"Look, I'll get them, alright? There's no need to panic. They're drying out in the kitchen right now, just stay right there and I'll get them, alright?"

The woman slipped out the door, leaving the other to catch her breath as she sat on the raised mattress. Now that her worries were assuaged, she actually took the time to raise her bandaged hand, and truly look at it.

It was strange. She wasn't sure why, but looking at it made her mind race, for some reason simultaneously excited and anxious at the sight, as if she should know better about it, but she didn't. Wounds should naturally make anyone worried… but why, for a few moments, did she feel like she wanted to smile?

The blonde came bustling back, hands cupped together around something-

"Give-give it here, now-"

The woman sighed loudly as she dropped them onto the bed next to her nagging guest, who immediately began the long and labourious process of biting each bronze ring so she could slot her remaining fingers through them.

"I would have returned them, anyways. Honestly, going nuts over some jewellery-"

"Don't make infantile assumptions!" The girl snapped. "They're all I have!"

That sucked any remaining argument out of the older blonde woman, who seemed very self conscious about her presumptions, while the traveller calmed down further as she sagged against the headboard of the bed.

"... I apologise for my earlier unseemly actions." She said, after a pause, while she tested the feeling of the flesh of her fingers bunching around metal as she flexed them. "Panic is no excuse for assault. I should have acted with more dignity."

The blonde woman rubbed the back of her neck, taking in the awkward pause, "Um… well, I don't know about that. You're somewhere unfamiliar, and if you really treasure those rings, I guess anyone would have lost it if they had lost theirs…"

"Thank you. May I know your name, then?" She asked, deciding to restart this situation properly.

The blonde shrugged. "Felicity. What's your name? I have to say, you are really unlike anyone else I've seen around here."

"I wouldn't be surprised if people like me are are a rare sight," She smirked. "Still, not to be impolite. My name is O…"

She trailed off from her instincts, as she found no memory to pave the road she had been unconsciously walking on.

"O…?" Felicity repeated in confusion, and she saw her guest's face contorted into a grimace.

"... I don't remember," 'O' sighed. The past was still a void, but dredging up one letter was still a start. O it would be, then. "That letter will have to suffice as identification, for now."

"Amnesia…?" Felicity diagnosed under her breath, something clinical in her voice as she scrutinised O further. "You're annoyed, not surprised… how long ago did you realise you suffered memory loss? Is it part of how you arrived here? You just… dropped out of the sky."

O held up her hand, stopping the questioning, because hers were going to be more important.

"First things first, Felicity, I need to know where I am. I can answer your questions more accurately after. Which city did I arrive in?"

Felicity didn't answer immediately, but the number of expressions she switched through began to worry O.

"I… I'm from Seattle, but I'm not sure we're still in Seattle, because…"

O's caretaker struggled to find the words to encapsulate things, driving the amnesiac to greater worry. Finally, she abruptly stood, sliding her chair back with her knees. "Come with me to the roof. It's better if you saw it for yourself."

* * *

O was further dressed in a skirt and a pair of slippers, before being led to an elevator in what she realised was a multi-story apartment building. So she believed, anyways, if there was something anachronistic to the structure, it was the elevator itself, an old-fashioned wooden thing whose door was shut by hand.

She had begun filing away that oddity when Felicity returned them to the roof. On the paved ground was a small, mild crater, more a stone engraving of a cobweb than anything implying impact force, but O looked at it, understanding she must have fallen there. But like the elevator, that fact was filed quickly away, as instead she quickly walked to the edge of the roof, to look past and see where she was, and she realised none of it made sense.

Something she hated about the birth of modern society was its light pollution. Once upon a time, man ventured across the seas and the plains because they could look up and see the map of the cosmos charting their path. But the end of exploration was marked by the indolence of man, as they sat down and decided to blind themselves with the light of their creations, until they no longer bothered looking up, as there was only a murky, foggy haze that blocked out the spheres. Antarctica was perhaps the only place left in the world untouched by this.

And so it was here, with a city without end. Before her, O could see nothing by skyscrapers of all ages and eras. Low rise brick, mid rise stone, high rise concrete, and sky-scarring glass and steel, all arranged in blocks with no consideration of organisation. Just pillars of man's desire for expansion, up and down like a graphed seizure. The main thoroughfares cutting the blocks up were peppered with a constant barrage of lights, of cars that moved slowly about, full of people caught up in their own business.

The sky above was a cancerous mix of orange and black, the air laced with city lights and dust.

Yes, dust. O saw in the distance where the edge of the city was, and it was also the edge of the world. Rising up from the horizon was a giant wall of grit and soil, being thrown by the winds in a perpetual storm. The few buildings at the edge were lightless, and the streets empty, showing that nobody was bothering to do anything about the dust storm swallowing the city besides perhaps move inwards.

She couldn't place the where or even then when of her location. Felicity saying she was from Seattle meant little. There was no city that had this geography. There was no time a dust storm like this ever existed.

"Felicity… what am I looking at?" O asked, more on reflex than anything, as she stood stupefied at the unreal sight.

Somewhere in the back of her head, she thought of a city in flames, but even that adhered to some sense of apocalypse by definition. This… made no sense.

Behind her, O could hear Felicity fidget with her words, as she tried to explain something she knew little more of than an amnesiac did.

"You're… looking at America. I think. All of it. What's left of it."


	3. America 2: Trampling Girl

Despite Felicity's suggestions otherwise, O refused to stay cooped up in her host's flat, like some invalid or traumatised puppy. From where she was on the roof, she immediately turned around and asked Felicity to take her to the streets, to see for herself what nonsense land she had arrived in.

Felicity did a lot of fretting about the locals looking at a one-armed girl, despite O's general nonchalance, but the latter decided if they were going to make such a big deal of it, she would accept the large coat that was thrown over her shoulders like a cape, which obscured her figure well enough, even though it was a bit of an act to keep it in place: her much trimmed right shoulder unfortunately left less real estate to hang fabric off.

Still, with those and a pair of pointed leather boots, she looked almost ready to fit in and mingle with the crowds.

Had she not looked at the horizon, O would have thought the city around here to be chronologically placed within … 1930s America, she guessed. Somehow, like she would casually travel through time before this. Or she would know about what an 'America' is for that matter, but perhaps that was just something else buried in her missing memories.

But it was a dingy, weary city. The people's clothes looked repaired repeatedly. The cars were large, inefficient looking show pieces. The buildings around here were predominantly stone, the stores sold their wares with paper, wood and tin. Nothing about the streets looked modern

"I was studying medicine a year ago, before whatever happened."

"Whatever?" O asked. The vague phrasing was not indicating anything of use.

Felicity sighed. "I mean… I don't even know when it happened. I was asleep, and when I woke… everything was wrong. We started gathering and trying to figure out what it was, and people started realising…"

The woman stopped at the corner of an intersection and pointed upwards. O followed the finger to a building in the distance, a dark glass thing that looked as if several blocks were protruding outward to form a wider base.

"That's Willis Tower. That's supposed to be in Chicago."

She turned and pointed to another. "That's the Comcast center from Philadelphia."

They were all metal and glass to O, but Felicity identified the problem about each and every one of them. Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, Atlanta…

"It's not like they got pulled out of the ground and just tossed into one city. The people here, some are from West Coast, some are from Kansas, Oregon, Arizona, Georgia… their houses… it's like the entire continent just got squeezed into just a few hundred miles. Maybe even less. And we all come from different years. Hell, look at the buildings and the streets. Nothing matches. It's like… America-land, or something."

"Compression…" O muttered to herself.

To compact thousands of miles into what Felicity wanted to deny was little more than a glorified city… yes, by definition it was impossible. Except O knew that technically it wasn't, with the right method.

Off the top of her head, she could think of a few rituals that could warp space, or move mass across land. There were even a half dozen ways to fool the senses into believing another story.

Illusions couldn't account for her own presence. By nature they didn't handle outside interference well. Unless, the illusion was cooked up specifically for her, but who would? Some single-letter, single-armed corpse freshly warmed over in a place no one knows about, tossed across time and space? And if she were so incompetent that she had tricked herself with her own Mystery, she would just kill herself out of common courtesy to other magi-

Magi…?

She was a magus…? Because she used…

...Magecraft.

"Not only that, no one know how this happened. All we know is that it's getting worse."

O's eyes widened. "Worse?"

"The wall of the dust storm is closing in," Felicity said as she mournfully sighed. Around them, people hurried on, trying to escape her words. "It's burying the city. Living space is shrinking."

O listened to Felicity's silence, and understood every bit of what it meant. They both looked into stormy horizon, and the amnesiac wondered how much panic and fear was running under the skin of the city.

"No one's done anything?"

Felicity rubbed one of her arms uncertainly. "There's something like a government set up here, and they say they're looking into it, but I don't know… nothing is happening, and they just seem to be more interested in maintaining their grip-"

A cracking noise erupted through the air.

Heads turned, first in surprise, but as the cracking began to repeat in increasing tempo, crowds started running from the noise.

O, however, was not so given to drama, and it seemed, neither was Felicity, who cursed under her breath, while her amnesiac guest pointed in the direction of the noise.

"What was that?"

"Thugs, trying to take what they want. Let's get out of here, that sort-of government will send men soon."

O almost wanted to agree, but she suddenly thought better, as she started moving towards the noise.

"Well, then, let's see what we're dealing with, then."

"Hey-wait! They're shooting over there!"

It was an objectively obvious fact, and O decided not to dignify it with a response as she stalked in a course opposite to the human river escaping the noise.

At another corner, the amnesiac peeked to look around, and watched a group of men in a patchwork array of clothing. Cotton jackets and slacks over threadbare t-shirts, and bandannas fitted over their mouths. A few wore bowlers or caps. They had semi-automatic pistols, a few shotguns… all of which were being fired at random into the air down the streets, more intent on emptying it with panic than anything, though O did notice the navy blue uniform of a man lying on his face, sprawled and unmoving.

The men were forming a defensive line around the blasted front of a grocery story, where some were trying to load as many crates as they could into the back of a puttering pick up truck. The open-topped wood chests were stuffed in fresh fruit and vegetables, while others were filled with tinned food and bread.

So, since there was no Wild West, it seemed people just engaged in daylight banditry inside the mega-city instead. And yet it was for something as simple as fresh food.

O looked at the weathered appearance of the men, their slight sallowness of frame, and wondered how much of a privilege eating was.

In the distance was the sound of sirens, and a bandanna wrapped head emerged from the cabin of the pick up truck. He threw his head backward, shouting at the loaders.

"Come on! Hurry up!"

"We're fucking trying!" One shouted back, trying to shove a little more food, while others were beginning to climb up and cling to any open part of the truck they could.

Before long, the amnesiac watched the truck began to drive forward and away from the scene of the raid. But a very different sort of car came around a corner in front of the bandits. It was bright white and made of plastic, with brightly flashing red and blue lights atop it, and wholly anachronistic to everyone else. So it wasn't just people and buildings that were being nailed haphazardly to the 1930s.

The truck was too ungainly and too heavy to swerve around the more modern police car, which had 'Security Bureau' emblazoned on the side, and it was forced to screech to a halt, the truck and all its occupants wrenching forward from the inertia for a second. One of the bandits hanging off the side had a shotgun, which he fired once into security vehicle's windshield, which turned clear glass into a white cloud of anachronistic plastic and buckshot. This brought the car to a halt, which wasn't entirely to the bandits' aim of passing through, but several more of the men reflexively kept up the gunfire, peppering the car with their handguns, and keeping the occupants inside, alive or dead.

But even as the barrage continued, the passenger side door opened. O seemed to be the only one surprised who disembarked: a blonde girl wearing a green overcoat and hat. She didn't look older than ten years.

This… she… was in a security car. This tiny thing was being used to protect order?

But O's surprise was short-lived. It was only the appearance of the girl that had caught her off guard. But there was something she vaguely recalled that was telling her that here, in this bizarre place, the role that was being served was both desired and expected in O's line of work (What? What was that?).

At the sight of her, the guns went silent, all their owners watched with growing horror that they were facing off with this particular girl.

Then came the litany of shouts.

"Oh-oh, _shit_-!"

"Get us out of here!"

"She's gonna kill us! Floor it! _Floor it!_"

The driver fought with the throttle for a second before he managed to wrench it into reverse, causing the truck to pull away from the girl as fast as it could. Some of the thieves fired their guns, trying to tag the child, but the shaky transport and their own panic did little for their accuracy.

The girl stared at her departing foes. Then grew.

There was no hyperbole here. O didn't even have time to blink as the child, with the same proportions, simply blew up in size; metre after metre, past the height and width of an adult, a truck, a house… upwards and onwards until her shoulders brushed the buildings on both sides of the city street, several storeys up. Once toy-like, she now loomed over the car like it was now the toy.

She raised one of her booted feet.

The bandits screamed, and many of them leapt clear of the truck they rode. Several more were less lucky, stuck inside the truck cabin a second too long; sitting atop the flatbed, too hemmed in by the cargo to start climbing out.

The child crushed the truck underfoot, punctuated by a loud crunch of wood, metal, fruit and bone, while the ground shuddered at the impact, throwing a wave of force and dust outwards from the source.

Behind O, she heard a yelp. Turning, the amnesiac saw Felicity, who had at some point caught up to her. Her host was now sitting on the ground, having been unbalanced by both the gigantic stomp, and given the paleness of her face, the violence she was seeing.

Felicity sudden threw a hand over her mouth, and O turned around to see what had happened. She herself then grimaced at the colours that had been smeared into the ground, as the foot pulled away.

Around the streets, the bandannaed criminals unsteadily rose to their feet, stunned by the shockwave and perhaps the sheer presence of the massive child looming over them. What were ants to a god, anyway?

Or a god's helpers.

The sirens hand continued, and from behind the giant's feet, more security vehicles arrived and stopped under her shadow. Men in blue uniforms, helmets, and black bullet-proofed vests exited their cars, carrying rifles that they trained on the trembling criminals.

A voice echoed over the emerging firing line, "Pick your targets! Fire!"

Felicity yelped from behind O, as the latter watched the second act of the street-painting exhibition began - the surviving bandits jerked violently, bodies punctured with a fusillade of unrelenting fire. Their wounds sprayed blood across the paved road, while they jerked to and fro, and died. Some scrambled for cover, trying to return fire, but the scattered shots were far and few in the face of the sustained and continued barrage that this security force was maintaining.

Eventually the last bandit stopped standing upright, and at a call to cease fire, there were just crawling and dying men out in the streets, and the sound of feeble and fading moans here and there.

While smoke seeped from the barrels of their rifles, the security personnel slowly broke their line and cautiously paced forward, while a man in the rear relayed orders.

"Take it slow. Secure the area. Let's make sure they don't get back up."

O watched the proceedings, all the while absorbing the implications. A world where people killed for food. Where people killed the people taking food. Where those maintaining order were in control of that towering monstrosity.

One of the soldiers guarding this land walked up to a wheezing survivor, and shot him until he was neither.

"Shit!" Felicity swore behind her, "We have to get out of here!"

"Yes, let's," O agreed. Violence as the first resort bred a propensity for hair triggers.

The two women began backing away, until one of the men securing the streets noticed them. Which wasn't hard, since they seemed to be the only bystanders in sight.

They froze at the sight of a rifle being trained on them, and O felt Felicity's fingers dig into her one arm and the shoulder opposite.

"You there! You two! Stop right there! Hands where I can see them!"

O slowly, almost languidly brought her one arm up in surrender, while Felicity shakily brought her hands up from behind the younger girl's shoulders.

"What are you two doing here?"

"We were just walking!" Felicity croaked, still shrinking at the sight of the gun aimed at them both, "We were just walking and they were shooting and we hid! We haven't done anything! Don't shoot me!"

"We were just passing through," O agreed, unperturbed. Either she was going to be shot or she was not, and death was a continued reality for her. It was her job to be ready to deal with it.

"Bullshit. These streets are empty except for you two," the soldier said, frowning.

"It's the truth! They were shooting! We didn't want to get shot running away!" Felicity argued, but O had a feeling this would be a one-sided argument. She had to get ready to escape.

She wanted to roll her eyes at that though. Yes, she would politely ask these nice men to not shoot them for a few minutes, while she carved a ritual on the ground just in case. No, that would be terrible for the pavement. She'd ask if one of these upstanding gunmen had any chalk or charcoal-

Another unbidden thought reached her. _You don't need to prepare a ritual. You have everything ready, already_.

This, O thought, as she suddenly felt the metal on her hand pinch her fingers.

"I want you two to come with us," the man ordered.

"But we don't have anything to do with this! We just told you!" Felicity retorted, aghast.

"If you don't, then you won't have any trouble at headquarters. Unless you want to resist an officer of the law."

"Hey, fuck you!" Felicity shot back, much more vehemently. "None of you guys are the police! You just got more guns than the rest of us. And that thing there that steps on everyone all over this place!"

At this point, several more of these uniformed and armed men noticed the altercation, and slowly began forming a semi circle, rifles low, but certainly being caressed with meaning and intent. Above, even the giant turned its head to look down on them.

O and Felicity slowly backed up, while the men slowly approached.

"Miss, are you resisting our instructions?" The first soldier insinuated.

"Look, just let us go! You already killed everyone here!"

O could hear the fraying edges of her host's near hysteria, and knew this was the limits of their dialogue. A few more words and then the two would find themselves in the process of being dragged into the squad cars.

Therefore, O's hand, once raised placatingly, began to push forward until her palm was thrust in the direction of the men. The action caused every rifle to be pointed in her direction.

"Hey, what are you doing?" One of the security officers warned.

In her head, she envisioned her flesh set alight, and the agony of it melting off her bones.

"Nothing," she chanted.

"If you are, then you better put that hand-"

_"__Nihil."_

An unseen wave erupted from O's palm. Even she could only tell it worked from the way the heat running through the channels in her body expunged itself through her hand, but when it did, she could see every man before her begin to go slack, their eyes dilating.

This was their chance. Turning about, O quickly walked off, grabbing Felicity by the arm to her confused warnings.

"Let's go."

"Wha-wait! But they're-"

"They'll forget we were even here."

"Forget? What did you do…?"

Above, the giantess seemed confused about the inactivity of the ants she was supposed to protect, and why they were standing there until the two women slipped around the corner. After almost a minute, the first of them began to blink and shake their heads. Looking around, he saw them all standing around facing one direction.

"What the… what are you all standing around for? We need to secure this area!"

* * *

Felicity slammed the door shut behind them as she and O returned back to the blonde's apartment, one shaken, the other feeling something in her stirring.

"What the hell was that? What even happened!? What did you do?" Felicity's questions came a mile a minute.

O took a deep breath, something rattling in her far too much to begin responding properly.

"I need to wash my face."

"Hey-!"

"Just wait. Do something to occupy yourself. You'll fret less."

O wandered into a side room, half-focused, and saw a sink. Throwing the coat off her shoulders, her one hand opened up the cold tap that spent several seconds spewing gritty water before it cleared out, and she spent several more cupping what little she could with her one limb and slamming it into her face, rubbing again and again to sweep away the dust she could feel.

It was strange, for all this knowledge to feed back in motes and scraps. No name, and no past, yet the knowledge of how to apply Prana to create Mysteries came unrelenting.

Mysteries, and the knowing that her rings were helping enact them. And she had five of them.

Water dripped from her bangs, and she looked down at the water slipping between her fingers and the brass on them.

And she looked up, and remembered this place had a mirror. And she finally saw herself.

It was strange to see the surprisingly young girl in the glass widen her eyes in a mixture of surprise and confusion. Stranger still that it took this long for her to discover her face.

A wild tangle of silvery-white hair spilled down her back and over her shoulders, and a pair of yellow eyes looked back at O. A slender creature, she was, her paleness and femininity giving an impression she was perhaps a princess or a noble in another world, a being to be waited on and received with graciousness, not something tromping around with the meek of the Earth, to break her nails on stone. But here she was.

She stood, and the figure in the mirror matched her. She straightened her back, and looked at the water drop off her face and leave wet spots on her shirt. Turning her head from side to side, she slowly took in the fact she was this person, this woman with neither a complete body or a memory.

But she still had her intrinsic self. Shifting her cheeks and her lips repeatedly, O made half-hearted attempts at smiling, and grinning, and even a coy smirk, and found them to be out of practice and awkward. She was not that sort of person. But when she set her gaze forward, imagining the world past her mirrored visage, and left herself a stern and focused stare, she nodded, knowing this was her.

Now, as for what that focus should be aimed at…

She left the bathroom, and saw Felicity sitting at a small table that likely indicated the narrow space besides the kitchenette was supposed to be for dining. On it was an old radio she had carried over, and some cups with a kettle of fresh tea.

O's frowned, "That familiar, those men… who are they in this place?"

Felicity had her ear turned towards the radio, as she looked at nowhere in particular, fingers clasped before her mouth as she listened to the music coming out of the machine.

"Sit down, and wait a moment, you'll find out," the blonde woman said.

On cue, the radio started broadcasting a voice, _"__And now a short message from the city's emergency provisional government…"_

O nodded, and silently pulled a chair out to sit on it, and looked at the broadcasting device.

_"__...Fellow Americans, this is Polis Telgrim, your emergency coordinator for this city. I just want to assure everyone about the shooting incident that occurred earlier today…"_

The voice was measured, practiced, and assuring. A well of unease and despise rose in O listening to the man's voice.

_"__A group of some six to seven men raided the common goods store on Seventh Street. They were armed with handguns and shotguns, and killed two citizens of this city while attempting to steal food and necessities inside that were intended for the honest, decent people surviving our strange situation._

_"Thankfully, trained officers of our emergency Security Bureau, and a member of the Special Team prevented the robbery from succeeding."_

"He's going to say 'some' of the food was damaged, and not to worry," Felicity groused.

_"__Unfortunately, some of the supplies were damaged in the ensuing battle," _Telgrim noted, promptly. _"__But we would like to assure Americans listening to this that the city's supply issues are not issues at all."_

O doubted it, for some reason, lip quirking with displeasure. All that food wasted, because the wrong familiar was used for the job.

_"__What is a problem is the need to rebel against the greater majority. Because of this, people have been hurt, and maybe even killed, because others wanted food more than others. I must remind Americans that self-discipline and trust in the established emergency government is what will allow us to survive. I know many of you are worried about the progress the government expertise has made in trying to find a way for our people to defeat the dust storm, or the continued rationing we've been had to sustain._

_"I want to assure all citizens that a special project I am personally overseeing is underway to confront this danger we face-"_

O's eyes widened, and a sudden bolt of inspiration hit her. The dust storm, the shrinking city, the reason why she was here in the first place, that wanting she felt…

_"__-And if all goes well, we will obtain the power necessary to make it through these trying times. But only, only if we Americans remain resolute, and trust in each other, rather than turn to petty-"_

"Turn it off," O coldly said. Felicity blinked and looked at her guest, and saw the amnesiac glaring at the radio, which she uneasily shut off.

"...He's lying," O simply said.

Felicity's expression went slack in shock.

"Are you sure?"

"He's speaking full of euphemisms. The project he's working on won't solve anything. He doesn't want this storm to end, for some reason. I don't have all the pieces yet, but I think I know what he is, what he does. He'll use up everyone in this city so he can get out last."

"...I fucking knew it! I knew everything was wrong!" Felicity snarled, and grabbed the radio with one hand, and held it up to glare at it.

"The dust storm's been eating up this city for almost a year! Telgrim kept promising he'd do something, and whenever anyone complained his fucking nazis knocked us down, leaving us to scramble for food and water. 'Security', I should have expected that doubletalk from him! Do you know what he's doing?"

O shook her head, "I don't know what he wants, but I know how he's probably doing it. It's why he has that giantess at his beck and call."

"That thing has been stomping any resistance flat," Felicity muttered. "There have been people trying to pull off an uprising for a while, but they can't fight against her."

"It's a familiar of some sort. Summoned via a ritual."

"Summoned?" Felicity said, eyebrow cocked, almost ready to doubt, before recognition flashed across her face. "What you did earlier… are you telling me that's-"

"It's called magecraft… I think. The memory is fragmented," O admitted, before raising her hand to show off her rings. "Polis Telgrim must be a magus of some sort. As am I."


	4. America 3: Saber of the Shore

Polis Telgrim, the man overseeing the 'emergency' government handling things in this strange… contracted, glued together, patchwork not-America, was likely a magus. There was no proof, but the suspicions were mounting on all levels of this impromptu society, so voiced by Felicity.

By strength of force, they enacted arbitrary rule, promising freedom through control; a careful lie using an element of truth. Just long enough that the man at the very top of the pile of rubble could reap his own benefits. And for those that resisted, he had his magecraft to make sure the cogs of society pun smoothly and chewed through their bones.

"The government's headquarters are in the Empire State Building," Felicity explained, nodding out the window towards one particularly pointed spire.

"A symbol embodying New York City, a crown jewel of America in the world's consciousness… it would be a good locus to install more powerful formalcraft rituals," O murmured to herself. "He might have something I'm here for."

"'Might'? You dropped into this crazy place just for something? Like what?"

O grimaced, but held out her hand. "I don't know precisely, but it's connected to these rings. They pulled me here."

Felicity sighed heavily, earning her a slight glare from her companion, "Magic rings, summoned spirits walking around in a city that's shrinking, controlled by someone who might be a wizard, and I'm talking to a bonafide witch-"

"We're magi. Witchcraft is one branch of study, get it right."

"Look, just my brain's cramped, okay? Let me just work this out," The blonde complained, fingers on her temples. "This whole city barely makes sense, and now you're telling me the best explanation is magic… ugh, told to me by some girl who dropped out of the sky with no memories. It's… it's like… a novel, or something!"

"Get used to it. I'm only telling you this much because this place is apparently cut off from the outside world enough that Telgrim is willing to blatantly show off his familiar. Magi are not nice people. You don't want to know what some of us do to stay secret."

O decided it wouldn't help adding that large parts of the Empire State Building would likely have been turned into a Workshop, defenses and all, with the way Felicity was acting. She didn't really need to know O intended to march towards near-certain death, or at least a much-abbreviated life as research components, all on the basis of a subconscious tugging on her fingers.

"Even if you want to go after Telgrim, what are you planning to do? Do you even know what you want? How do you even know he's the one who has it?"

"I'll know it when I see it," O cooly retorted. "I'm also sure a magus will be holding it. Even if there are others under Telgrim, your 'emergency coordinator' will likely want to keep hold of anything unique for himself, if only to look into replicating it. He'll have what I want."

O looked at Felicity with some curiosity, "You seem rather wary of this, for someone who seems to have little love left for this group."

"Hey, maybe I'm just worried that the first real idea that came out of a girl I've known for less than a day is, 'let's go attack the glorified warlord running this city'?" Felicity shot back. "Seriously, you're just one person! He's got an army, and that magic… big thing you keep mentioning. A familiar right?"

"It's not like I can put my trust in some armed uprising to handle all of that for me," O said, shrugging with one arm. "If there had been any other magus opposing Telgrim, I'm sure you would have had more success forcing the false government here to actually fix your problems."

Felicity frowned, deep in thought. Finally, hesitantly, a question came to her. "Are you planning to take off right this instant?"

O gave an amused snort. "Of course not. This body still needs a little more rest… but I think we're all running short on time, if Telgrim intends for this dust storm to eat this entire city."

"It's not like you're wrong…" Felicity murmured. "But I can't just let you waltz into danger…"

"I'm not going anywhere for now," was all O admitted.

And it was true. The attempted robbery and overblown response had kept the shrinking city on edge for a while, and O saw no reason to rock the boat. Over the course of weeks, the amnesiac magus kept to herself, occasionally heading up to the roof of Felicity's building to observe the city at large. On occasion, the giant girl would be seen between the buildings, carrying an axe as large as her, and keeping any second thoughts of the populace well and properly intimidated.

The interim also gave Felicity a chance to give an under-the-table examination of the amnesiac. Loss of the arm aside, the former medical student pronounced that her guest was, as far as she could tell, a healthy, relatively fit girl reaching her 20s. It also gave Felicity an excuse to saddle the magus with a routine of stretches and other light exercise that O chafed at, but begrudgingly followed when the blonde innocently implied O was not up to the task normal folk could easily do.

Still, that gave O the chance to listen to the radio. The broadcasts gave more info on the dust storm, and the fact it gained about a foot in distance each week. Not much, but knowing another ring of buildings at the edge of this miniscule world became weathered away, unbreathable and unusable, made the denizens of America shudder and fear. Another round of complaints came forth, some more violent than others, some directed at the emergency government, others directed at civilians. The Security Bureau came down on them all just the same. Few wanted to complain afterwards: they still had food and water to drink, for what it was worth. It was better than dying for a tenuous cause.

The city was boiling. But O had to spend time getting reoriented with her body. Better here, with food and bed, than those strange stone steps she had jumped away from.

The things she did on instinct slowly returned to her as knowledge. Things like the circuits in her body and the prana they created. She vaguely recalled runes, and mystic codes. Perhaps her rings counted as one. O suspected she should have had a Magic Crest. Magus lineages were tied to such. If she were an example, she should have inherited something, but all she could feel inside were a multitude of high quality circuits. Valuable, but commonplace.

It was something that Felicity wondered about, whenever she returned from work - Despite O's arrival, the need for pseudo-nurses at a nearby makeshift clinic had not ended.

Setting down a bag of rations and vegetables she had been supplied with, she asked, "Do you remember where you learned magi-"

O pointed a finger at her meaningfully.

"Magecraft. Where did you learn it, still? Some of the terms you mentioned seem kind of rigidly defined."

It was a good question, one that put fingers to O's chin as she tried to find any explanation for that. It stood to reason that a vocabulary was only used when it was gifted. Therefore…

Therefore…

"Maybe my family?" O's tone brokered more theory than fact. "I didn't emerge fully formed, you know."

She hoped. Her awakening was not exactly standard.

"Whoever I was raised by probably first showed me. Magecraft is insular. We don't hand this out to passing acquaintances."

"...But could you teach it?" Felicity asked.

O gave her a very dark stare. "Let me be blunt. You're asking someone who barely understands her own grounding in manipulating the laws of reality, to teach you, or perhaps other disgruntled members of society, to fight the armed forces of a magus who has better knowledge and resources. And no, there are no 'tips to start on your own'. Unless you want to create a formalcraft ritual that would go out of control and possibly destroy the entire city."

The medical woman sighed. "Just checking every possibility."

Still, O understood the resource she represented, and it wasn't like she could feign neutrality. Wait too long, and someone would come to make her join their Justified Revolution at gunpoint. And even if there were a hypothetical possibility of allying with Telgrim in exchange for access to his materials, there was nothing to say he wouldn't string her along with promises and lies until the city went up in sand and grit, according to his schedule.

No, she had to take what she wanted from him before the deadline, and that goal aligned with the grumblings in the streets to wrest power and force a solution - "if only there were a counter to the Security Bureau's 800-prana gorilla".

Three weeks after O's arrival, Felicity sat down across from her, while the magus thumbed through a decrepit copy of _The Prisoner of Zenda_. Any story that let her imagine another place was the only thing worth reading.

O peered over the top of Rudolf Rassendyll's latest ploy, and met Felicity's uncertain features.

"Yes?"

"...O… is it right to say that you're going to fight Telgrim?"

"I believe so," O admitted.

"I hate to say this, but you might really be able to help some of the people fight back… at the very least, it can't hurt to work together with them."

Could it be…?

"You've met these people?" O asked.

Felicity nodded. "I never thought I'd do this, but everything you've said: about the government, the way this city is shrinking, why you're here. I don't want you to fight, but you want to, and… it might actually help this city."

She sighed out her guilty conscience, to O's patient listening. Then the latter spoke up.

"What I'm doing is my own choice. I don't want you to feel responsible for that. Deciding to take advantage of the situation to help survive is not a crime, here. And if what you have can help me too, then I'll listen. What do these people want?"

"When I asked around a bit for people fighting the emergency government, some mentioned they managed to steal magic books and spells from the Security Bureau."

"And this city is still standing?" O sighed, incredulous due to her warnings.

"Thankfully, they can't get it to work," Felicity replied. "But apparently one of the spells they have is for summoning magic creatures. I think like the giant girl the government has. If we have one of our own… just taking that monster out would be a game changer."

That did sound promising. O wasn't sure how viable the familiar would be in fighting the government's, but worse come to worse, it would nominally be under O's control, so the profit would be on her end.

"Can you arrange a meeting with them, then?"

"They're already waiting for us. We just need to go to them."

O couldn't help but smirk. "You're being awfully eager."

"Heh, maybe I am," Felicity chuckled ruefully. "It's a bit sick, but maybe I'm getting excited by all this… being part of something secret, and something that might actually be worthwhile."

"If you're set on this course, then I shall follow," O said, rising from her seat to look for a coat to drape over herself as was becoming customary.

* * *

Felicity was no expert in subterfuge, no master of secret codes. She may have been furtive, but the city was all eyes and ears, knowing and reporting. They reached the wrong places.

They may have exited out the back of their apartment, and walked down narrow alleys out of sight of the main streets, but sooner or later, they had to cross an intersection. Try as they might to merge with the crowds, they were looking and waiting.

"Control, this is Watch Jupiter-Alfa-Nine," A mouth reported into a decidedly high-tech radio receiver hooked onto vest strap. Through the window of the car, they saw. "Two women sighted headed east along Yew Street, one positive ID for Felicity Bregia, the other matching APB subject, over."

_"__Watch Jupiter-Alfa-Nine, solid copy from Control."_ The radio crackled back._ "__All units in the vicinity, be advised, perform loose follow. Attain final destination, then await further instructions, Over."_

* * *

The city only partially functioned at times, and many of the buildings that had been plucked haphazardly to share space with others didn't necessarily have any use, or the logistics to be usable. That left condemned and abandoned structures that were given little notice or care.

In the shadow of some unused office complexes was the lifeless carcass of an ice factory. In a world where even water was not entirely certain, ice was a needless luxury. Whatever heavy machinery it had was scavenged and disassembled, and what was left was draped in tarps for safekeeping.

And there it stood, free to bask in the sight of Felicity and O after passing through its outer gates and into its inner yard to look at the main factory building. Your everyday 19th century collection of brick and tile, with rotating frosted-glass windows running along the wall under the lip of the roof.

O wondered how to go about getting an introduction with whatever group apparently had holed themselves up here, but then the wooden loading gate at the front opened up to reveal a man holding a Garand, who walked up to the pair and asked, "Felicity? And this is the, uh, witch?"

The magus vaguely worried if this group was a tad too easy-going. It certainly helped her frown, to which the man looked at her confusedly.

"What?"

Felicity was quick to answer, "Don't call her a witch. She's a magus. They're strict about their vocabulary."

The man, your average good looking brunette in era-appropriate slacks and shirt, rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "Well, if it's the dame's say-so… I'm Levin. We better get inside before we catch any attention."

With that, the three hustled themselves onto the other side of the loading gate, which shut behind them. The inside of the former factory was a dusty and half empty expanse, retrofitted into something akin to a living space. The few real ice-making machinery left lay abandoned under heavy canvas tarps. Other furniture had been moved in. Standing partitions and cots gave an illusion of privacy for sleep. A table full of guns promised revolution. A few wood-fired stoves gave heat and solace, and a way to cook food. Scattered about were plenty of books and scattered games. A home away from home.

Around her, O saw a scattered mix of men and women who had kept watch from scaffolds and crates they used to look out the elevated windows. Many of them began to relax and lower their various guns, and began to congregate around the trio, or at least pay attention.

"All the people here want to take down that self-styled 'emergency government' that's got us on a leash."

"So I figured," O simply said.

"When we met Felicity, she said you could use…"

The woman in question gave Levin a pointed look.

"...Magecraft. Is it true?"

"If your asking for a demonstration, I'm not going to do sleight of hand for your amusement."

"Look, that monster the Security Bureau uses is one of their trump cards," Levin argued. "It's almost too good to be true to have you turn up and claim you can counter her."

"I didn't come to you; you asked for me," O countered. "You are the ones who happened upon this silver bullet; you just want someone to check if it can be used. So show me, and I will judge for you."

"You could always lie and steal it from us later," One of the men up on the scaffolding accused.

"I'm not going to waste that sort of effort to betray you and risk getting shot. Having magecraft does not make me omnipotent."

A part of her also reasoned that such subterfuge for this rabble was a greater insult to her. As if she were afraid of open conflict with these people.

Levin exhaled loudly, resigned for some reason, before waving the accuser off, and beckoning O and Felicity after him. "It's in the basement."

The two followed after the man, this first among equals, and stepped down into the dank underbelly of the facility as he explained himself.

"The Security Bureau has something called the Special Team. They're the ones who… do… well, you and them say you all use magecraft."

"Telgrim seems to have trouble shutting up about them," Felicity said from behind.

"Somehow, some of their stuff got stolen and put up on the black market here."

O tried not to be surprised. This city was on the verge of a breakdown, of course there would be an informal economy here, presided over by crooks, likely.

"And you bought it there? Does your buyer have a name?"

"Some guy who calls himself The Spider. Inventive, I know," Levin carelessly blathered. O supposed he was lucky he was talking to her, rather than anyone else.

Below, the basement proper was a claustrophobic space, with a low ceiling and real estate consumed by a variety of pipes and ducts to carry heat, water, or anything else to various places of the factory above. A few abandoned benches held stray maintenance equipment. A crate full of glass bottles that sat side by side with a metal canister labelled for gasoline was very telling. All of it was illuminated by several bare bulbs that hung from the wooden floorboards above, giving plenty of sickly yellow light, and an equal number of darkened shadows.

In this space, a large circle was scrawled out in several layers of white chalk, enough that nothing of the concrete underneath could be seen. Strange symbols ringed the inside and outside of the greater ring, and within a six-pointed star lay.

O stared at it, and a strange awe filled her. At first glance, it was as perfect as it could be drawn. The empty box of chalk nearby showed the amount of material and effort taken to create the magic pattern.

"We wanted to get it right the first time," Levin explained. "We don't know if it's the same spell that was used to create the Security's giant, but the book we got it from said it would summon a magic servant. We couldn't get it to work, then Felicity said she knew you… There's some sort of incantation for activating it-"

"I know this…" O murmured, loud enough for the other two to pick up.

"Do… do you remember something?" Felicity asked.

"I used to see this all the time. This isn't new…"

Levin's mouth quirked several times, unsure what was going on, before settling on a growing cheer, as he realised, "Then you know how to use-"

Above them, the roar of gunfire suddenly burst, and the trio's heads jerked up, while the revolutionary grabbed for his rifle.

Levin ran to the stairs and shouted upwards, "What's going on?"

"It's the Bureau! There here! They followed those two!" Someone shouted from above.

Felicity began to sway, suddenly very dizzy. "No… I was careful! Wasn't I careful…? I… they're here? They're going to kill everyone here…! Oh god, they're going to-"

Her head felt like it was going to disintegrate, and only O's firm hand wrapped around one of her biceps let her be gently lowered to sit in horror atop a nearby crate.

O made sure Felicity wasn't going to outright faint before looking up at Levin, whose glare was highly unfriendly.

"You can blame us later. You need to buy me time. I'll summon a familiar. It will kill anything the Security Bureau has right now."

Levin shook his head. "We don't have time. I need you up there, fighting."

"The familiar will do the most good. If I get killed up there, then this circle-"

The barrage of gunfire came again, louder.

Another voice sounded from above, a woman's. "Levin! We need you up here! Forget about those two!"

The man swore, gave one more derisive glare at the two, and then rushed up the steps.

"I'm so sorry… I caused this…!" Felicity babbled, something wet hitching in her voice.

"Be quiet," O snapped, and the girl flinched in guilt. "I'll fix this. I'll do this right. I know what to do."

She didn't know how. Whether it was some unconscious memory, or some greater force ordering her meat, O brought her hand up so she could bite into the bandage that had remained over injured arm all this time. Tearing the gauze, O twisted her head away, letting the white scraps fly away, revealing bare flesh and red marks atop her skin.

Felicity looked on in shock at the crimson patterns: a four pointed star sat at the centre of the back of O's hand, which was surrounded by a circle that protruded four sharp tips. Between each point were four more separate blade-like symbols, making the markings as a whole have an abstract impression of a starburst. It was far too orderly to be some scar or birthmark. "O, what is that!?"

"A Command Spell," the silver-haired girl said, with no further explanation, if she even knew one.

Instead, she thrust her reddened limb out at the circle, and gave it its orders.

_"__Let silver and steel be the essence.  
"Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation.  
"Let my great master be the ancestor.  
"Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall.  
"Let the four cardinal gates close.  
"Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate."_

The white of the circle became brighter, beyond any gleam the chalk or the bulbs could give.

* * *

Levin had worked hard to get together the men and women he had, people he trusted. He had worked harder still to give them the tools they needed to fight Polis Telgrim's sick playhouse of a government. A year was both a long and short time, but he had hoped that what he had gathered, along with the witch's help, would have meant something.

Little more than a fantasy of a boy thinking he can push over an adult, who was looking on with patronising amusement. Before punching back.

The first of three military trucks slammed through the old gates, knocking them right out of their frames. As they approached, guns poking through the windows of the factory opened up, and the cabs glowed with sparks and ricochets. Yet none passed through, as heavy steel plates that had been welded over the driving compartments proved impenetrable.

In response, several of Levin's revolutionaries on the roof of the ice factory began throwing burning molotov cocktails, spreading flames across the yard. As the gas bombs burst on the gravel, the Security Bureau trucks screeched to a halt in a line before the inferno, while soldiers were disgorged from the rear.

They were everything more than anything Levin's party had. Every shotgun, every handgun, every bolt-action rifle that fired, was immediately drowned out in a torrent of automatic fire, as light machine guns, assault rifles, sub machine guns, and semi-automatic long guns immediately shattered the windows.

Many of Levin's men and women had to duck back under cover, while a few unlucky members who were slow on the draw shook and fell to the ground with sickening crunches, their chests and faces perforated.

The Security Bureau's weaponry were varied. They were of American make, Russian make, German make, even Israeli make, but one thing they all shared was that none were older than the 1970s. The olive-drab soldiers' gear were equally advanced, too, as they wore load-bearing vests packed with spare magazines, grenades, and ballistic plating, along with forward-thinking helmets.

There was ammunition to spare for Levin's make-believe insurgency, a thousand times over, and they wouldn't even need all of it.

The rear line of the Bureau squad produced a soldier, who came to bear with a stubby, fat tube of a weapon, which he pointed at the wooden loading gate at the front of the factory.

* * *

Felicity yelped at the sound of a deafening explosion, and the sound of screaming and moaning, followed by more blasts. She wanted to help. But what could she do if she ran up there? Could she take a pulse while dodging bullets? Wrap a wound at gunpoint?

All she could do was listen.

_"__Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill.  
"Let it be filled fivefold for every turn, simply breaking asunder with every filling.  
"Let it be declared now;  
"Your flesh shall serve under me, and my fate shall be with your sword.  
"Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail.  
"Answer, if you would submit to this will and this truth."_

"Hurry, please! They're coming!" Felicity begged O, who was all but entranced by the gleaming lines of the spell, which wavered and dipped like an upside-down aurora.

* * *

The grenades had punched holes in the windows, making them unusable as cover. The force of the explosions had thrown people clear of the scaffolding and knocked them over, even crushing a few under the heavy metal bars and planks. The main entrance had been blasted open.

Levin swore as he rolled to his feet. Around him he heard no one on his side shooting. There was little time to act.

"Come on! Everyone get to cover! They're coming!"

He shouted hoarsely to the air, while those who still remained sensate staggered to their feet, trying to listen to his instructions and hide behind what machines still existed in the gutted factory.

Just as the last of them found firing positions, soldiers pushed through the gaps, rifles raised. They worked in an unsettling harmony, coldly taking aim and squeezing off single shots in a continual rhythm. They were better trained and less rattled; their aim was truer, and though gunfire was traded, it felt like only the insurgents were taking casualties. The moment a man or woman tried to peek from cover, a Bureau officer was already aiming at them, either to blow a hole through their body, or to force them back to safety. Each missed opportunity only allowed more of Telgrim's men to push inside, providing more guns and more angles of fire that slowly outflanked and outshot Levin's fast-evaporating cadre.

* * *

_"__An oath shall be sworn here.  
"I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven;  
"I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell."_

Felicity's froze as she heard someone slam onto the floor of the basement, and she turned, to see Levin, gasping on the floor, clutching his bleeding stomach. As he forced himself to sit up, four or five of his comrades leapt down into the basement after him, narrowly dodging bullets that chipped the edges of the basement access. In return, they blindly fired back upwards, putting holes in the roof above, while they screamed in anguished defiance.

"Come and fucking get us! Just try! We're right here and we're not going to beg, you hear me! You and this city can fucking go to hell!"

Felicity only faintly heard this, as she had jumped to her feet to stand by O, whose voice rose with passion equalled by the brightness of the summoning circle.

"They're here! You have to finish! Or we're going to die!" Felicity screamed, none of which reached the amnesiac's ears.

_"__From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power…"_

A tell tale and mortifying thumping reached Felicity's, and she turned around, and saw several metal orbs fall into the basement.

"Grenade!" Levin shouted, and they all scrambled.

Felicity didn't even know what she was doing. All she knew was that someone she had helped was not even aware she was in danger, and the only thing the blonde could do was wrap her body around her patient.  
_  
"Come forth from the ring of restraint, protector of the-"_

O's reality collapsed, as she felt something slam into her from behind, and it was followed by the loud sound of another thunderous blast that made everything go dark.

* * *

Her ears were ringing. Her vision was a blur, and her body wasn't working. Everything hurt.

O slowly felt her limbs move again, and she drunkenly kicked out with her legs and and fumbled with her one arm.

The room was so much darker. The light of her spell was missing. She could barely see, save for one blinking bulb. As her vision regained clarity, she could see her limbs, and saw the way the sleeves and skirts were covered with tears, through which slices and gashes could be seen leaving bloody rivulets in her skin. With that, the pain came, and she clenched her teeth at the sudden feeling of air on her wound, like acid on the nerves.

She had been thrown clear to the other side of the circle, and she lay on the ground on her side.

And on the other side, Felicity lay on her back, dying.

Her side was a shredded mess that cut through all her clothes and stained it red. The former medical student was limp, the only signs of life being her morbid gurgles as blood spilled from stained teeth, as even her eyes were glazed over.

"Felicity…?" O whispered, voice wavering, as she sat on her knees, hand reaching out in shock. And she looked past her friend, and saw the crumpled and destroyed bodies of Levin and a few others. All dead. All hopelessly finished.

Their blood spread outwards, and some of it spilled over the edges of the chalk symbols. And the spell was still silent.

She failed again. Accomplishing nothing. Achieving nothing, for all her power. She had hoped, at least for herself, that she was capable of wielding the power she had been given. But no. She was useless.

Had that been Felicity who blocked the explosion from reaching her? And now… she was… All O had said and done, and Felicity was now…

Felicity tried to raise a hand towards O, before a gunshot rang out and the side of her skull exploded, and made the corpse well and truly limp.

O stared at the carnage, before slowly turning to look up at one of the many armed men who had swept into the darkened basement, the smell of gunpowder and char growing with their arrival.

The one half-aiming his M16 rifle had brought a hand to a radio set taped to the straps of his combat vest, and he spoke into it.

"Target Rapunzel has been sighted. Minor injuries, though she looks shaken. Looks like she was trying some sort of spell. Over"

_"__Affirmative,"_ the radio's electric garble returned, _"__Detain her and bring her in for processing. Apply minimal force. Over"_

"Good copy. We're bringing her in. Over."

O bowed her head, and a frustrated snarl left her throat as her lips peeled back so she could hiss at the ground below her.

_Not like this…! Not like this!_

Was it going to end this way? What spell could she use that could be spoken faster than a bullet? What resistance could she give with her injuries?

Why couldn't her spell work? Where was her servant, who should have helped them, nevermind herself?

A flash erupted in her mind, unbidden. Searing light. Desperation. A man, with that smile…

_Not like this. Not when I hardly know who I am. Not when I've hardly accomplished anything! My Servant...my Servant! If you're there, then, please-_

Something dripped. And dripped again.

The soldier blinked, as did O as a droplet hit the ground between them, in the dead centre of the sigil. Clear and colourless water spread across the floor, even as the dripping grew in intensity until everyone had to look up at the source of the leak. In the low ceiling of the basement, a sodden patch in the wood grew, as water beaded from it, growing so heavy that a layer of fluid began to hang from above.

Then a foot emerged.

"The fu…"

The soldier barely managed to eke out a fading curse, while O stared at the limbs starting to lower from the bizarre, watery object, like it was an upside-down pool.

Everyone watched, dumbfounded, as a body drifted down - the trim and svelte form of an Asian girl, a teenager in a black bodysuit, from foot to fingertip, all of her dripping with water. The black-clad body was also covered by an embroidered blue cape cinched around her waist, with the rest of her strapped down with belts and blue cords, several of which were wrapped around a sword that hung at her side, securing it tightly to her body.

Above her, the woman's long black ponytail, many strands of which were streaked blue all the way to her scalp, floated above her body, undulating as the rest of her sank towards the floor.

As the unknown interloper touched down, gravity took hold, letting the hair fall and point towards the ground, while the water that had been drenching her suddenly found itself in gravity's embrace. Much of it fell from her body, gushing to the hard floor below in a series of wet slaps.

She breathed, brought a hand up to wipe her face clean, and opened her eyes, so that the first thing she saw was a confused man with a gun, growing more frightened the longer he met her piercing blue gaze.

The soldier remembered something distant, an order about what to do when the silver-haired girl was accompanied by another who looked out of place, and followed through on his instinct.

He raised his M16 to point it at the Asian woman's face.

Light flashed, and the assault rifle split in two, while the hand that had been bracing it fell off his wrist, as the woman's katana arced upward through meat and bone and into the air in one hand.

"Jesus… fucking… my arm!" The soldier screamed, beginning to stagger back, as he dropped the other half of the gun to clutch the gushing stump.

Even as he did, even as the men around her raised their weapons, even with her sword still up in the air, the girl took in everything around her. The decrepit and seemingly incognito nature of the location. The spread of armed men who seemed to have all been aiming in this direction the entire time. The bodies on the ground that didn't match them.

Behind her, another girl kneeling on the ground, shocked and in a position of weakness before them all, who even now was anchoring her to the world.

The fact she was the only thing standing between this one outcast and the forces arrayed before her.

The Asian decided then and there.

"Alright, then."

Bringing her sword around, she stabbed downwards into the man's chest, blade ripping out his back and wet with another substance.

Everyone immediately turned their guns from the magus to the soaking elephant in the room.

"Open fire!"

With a sudden show of strength, the Asian didn't even bother tearing her sword out of her victim. Instead she just used her other hand to grab the man by the inside of his thigh, and then held up aloft by sword and leg, in order to rush forward with her dying shield, whose back exploded into gore as he soaked up his former comrade's fire.

As she closed in, she hurled her corpse shield at a group of men, bowling them over. In the brief reprieve, the teenager juked sideways behind a row of pipes, which sparked and clattered loudly under a spray of bullets. In the low lighting, the flash of the muzzle flare and the splashes of ricocheting rounds made it harder to track the warrior dressed in dark colours, while she rushed between pieces of machinery and crates.

One man, holding a handgun and wearing a beret instead of a helmet, shouted over the din, "I need more flashlights! Jenkins, try and call the guys upstairs-"

The girl lunged out of the darkness, tracking the voice of the ones likely to be a leader. Despite her lean frame, the swing of her blade was enough to tear the man's head off at the neck, causing more cries of rage and terror. Their bullets were fast, but the swordswoman simply acted faster, and was more agile than those standing around, shooting at movements in the dark.

One moment, she would leap over waist high ductwork, her slashes tearing men to pieces, leaving nothing but wet footsteps in her wake. In another, she slid past a trooper from behind, a flickering light the only warning before he toppled, crying as his legs fell apart. It continued like that, one group of soldiers after another being ambushed in the cramped spaces around the basement, where they had no time to turn and shoot the darting summoned being.

The Asian had almost casually leaned back from one man who swung his Ruger like a club, before darting forward to wrap her off hand hand around his neck, almost crushing it completely when she saw the stairs leading up out of the basement, along with the several dozen grenades bouncing down the steps with innocuous thuds, their safety levers flying off every one of them.

Sneering, the girl charged the stairs, before throwing her captive atop the arriving explosives, and herself atop him.

The soldiers above, while they had their automatics pointed down the narrow passage, flinched for a second at the blast of smoke and debris sweeping out at the noise of the explosion. They were slow on the draw as a woman, her legs covered in blood and gore, was thrown clear of the stairway, and was upon them in seconds, a twirl of her body sending a spray of liquid in every direction, while the soldiers were torn apart in the maelstrom.

Forgotten in the chaos below, O's head cautiously poked out from behind the cover she had rolled behind. Looking around her, she saw the growing pool of blood and guts, and covered her mouth and nose as the acrid smell hit her nose.

It wasn't like she was squeamish. Her ilk knew what death was, but the suddenness of the sheer carnage was enough to even catch her off-guard as it multiplied a thousandfold in a few seconds.

But this was what her actions had wrought. Above her was more screaming and gunfire, a girl quick as storm tearing through them in what may very well be her name. The die was cast, and she had to catch up to the summoned familiar lest it was the sort to run roughshod without a firm hand.

Taking a few steps forward, O looked down, and saw the crumpled and lifeless forms at her feet, one of which was a blonde woman who had taken her in, and gambled all for her allegiance.

O sighed, and shut her eyes. Not even time to let the mourning arrive.

_I'm sorry, Felicity. All of you. Thank you for being by my side this short time. Maybe what will follow is your revenge._

Opening her eyes again, headed towards the stairs, doing what little best she could to avoid stepping in the puddles of blood.

* * *

The massacre's tide was turning.

Blood was spraying, painting the disused ice making machinery a brilliant bright red, and every step the soldiers took in retreat, fifty blurring footfalls forward was taken by the Asian, her every swing sending men flying. Some were granted the death of being cut, wholly in half or just in part. Others were given vicious punches and kicks that smashed them into paste against the walls or rusting technology, their bones crumpling and their organs exploding inside their bodies as they impacted brick and metal.

As the Asian rushed past a raised tarp that had been used to blanket a pair of machines, she turned to glance at it for a second, wondering.

Her concerns were proven true as the tarp exploded outward in a rush of gun thunder, a drum's worth of bullets slamming into the summoned being.

The Security officer who had hid himself under the impromptu tent charged out, snarling with his gun raised, before his heart fell through his guts in growing horror.

The Asian had her arms raised before her defensively, but her eyes were focused and unflinching, her act done by ritualistic meaning, rather than instinct.

Before her, dozens of solid slugs drifted aimlessly and harmlessly inside a wall of water that had risen between the two.

"What… what the hell…" The man stammered, before the Asian sword from the other side punched through the liquid barrier unhindered, blade sinking into his face.

As she tore her katana out through the side of the man's head, the water wall followed her motions and swung to the side to absorb more bullets effortlessly, while the men down the way desperately reloaded, or barring that, simply dropped their guns to pull out their sidearms.

"There are more wizards!?"

"She's a fucking freak!"

"We need open ground!"

"Send for back up! We have a hostile familiar on site! Call for the Special Team, ASAP!"

The girl charged forward, the water before her falling and splashing across the ground, and as she ran across it, the liquid grabbed the soles of her feet and hurled her forward so that she skated atop it like it was ice, and the distance between her and the soldiers disappeared in an instant. Before they knew it, another whole fireteam was mixing their blood with the water on the ground, and the nerve of the handful remaining shattered entirely.

The lucky few managed to break out of the confines of the facility, and ran for their lives for one of the transport trucks. It purred roughly, the driver frantically gunning the engine.

"The Thumper! Use it!", one of them shouted, and one brought up his breech-loading grenade launcher. It belched a streaming canister at the entrance of the ice factory, where the swordswoman slid into view, pursuing with all due viciousness.

They didn't even bother seeing what had happened, not even trusting in the din of the detonations. They just clambered into the truck, the leader of the few that remained hollering at the driver.

"Go! Go, go, _go!_"

The truck began to pull away, gaining speed as it headed towards the open front gates of the abandoned industrial centre.

In that moment, the roof of the ice factory burst apart, tile and wood flying in all directions while the Asian rose to the sky, aloft on a growing pillar of water swirling under her feet.

Down below she spied the escaping truck and narrowed her eyes as she pulled her sword back, grip in both hands.

"Princess of the Sea, Ninth Form!"

The pillar she rode on pulled itself into the sky, water coalescing about her sword in a bubbling sphere, roiling with prepared violence.

"Piercing Typhoon!"

With that, the Asian teenager thrust her katana forwards and downwards, and the water on it exploded forth, breaking into a spray of whistling drops.

When they fell down onto the truck, it tore through the canvas covering; it perforated the metal cabin and the hood. It burst the tires and punched holes through its flimsy chassis, water gushing from the wounds.

The truck, which had begun hitting thirty miles per hour, guttered to a wheeze and drifted to a halt. Underneath, a pool of gasoline and blood began spewing out.

The silence followed, almost hollow and unreal without the echoes of gunfire and explosions that had followed only seconds before.

O had reached the broken entrance of the factory building by then, and stared at the carnage she had summoned. Death and destruction in all directions, spread like the aftermath of a storm. In the silence there were sirens, wailing for reinforcements. It wouldn't be long before they arrived.

As she stood there, the familiar she called forth dropped from the sky, her feet crunching into the gravel like she had just skipped over.

Their eyes met, and O felt one of her feet slide back in caution. The Asian just swept her sword out to the side, and let the blood and grease on it fly off to leave an unblemished weapon to resheathe.

"A bit of a loud demonstration, but I think you know what you're getting into now," the girl said as she ambled forward, combing her hand through the bangs of her hair. The thick layer of blood on her body was no longer staining her, as it trickled away, mixing with the water that was beading off her until she was dry and spotless.

"By your summons, the Servant Saber has come forth. So Master…"

The Asian warrior - out of time, out of space, and certainly in the wrong place - sat down without a care on a nearby crate, looked to the side at O, and grinned.

"...You got yourself the right Servant?"


	5. America 4: Pause for opulence

"Entre-vous!" Polis Telgrim cheerfully called out, and Ms Sarah entered again, carrying a clipboard and a furtive look.

The coordinator of America's emergency provisional government was a slick fellow; lean, tall, and athletic, who seemed immaculately dressed in his striped shirt, solid black vest and tailored pants, while his blazer hung from a hook along one wall. Of course, he had a handsomeness to him too, with his sleek black hair and measured gaze from under his glasses, all of which gave him an air of cleverness, as he sat, half hunched over his desk, one arm propping his head up as he stared at the wooden board half covered with black and white stones.

Go was a game of intelligence, and only the truly intelligent knew how to play. It was a game of cunning and foresight, rather than cheap pattern recognition like in Chess. Mastering Go meant being able to manipulate both the battlefield and your opponent to create maximum benefits. It was a perfect game for him, save for that ugly Asian name. 'Go', whatever the hell that meant. Far East goobledy-gook. When he had time, he would make sure to rename the game into something more respectable.

It was this posture that Telgrim's assistant found him in, and with pursed lips, she resignedly reported:

"There's been an unexpected development."

"Don't get dramatic on me, Sarah. Tell me," Polis said, before he set a black stone down.

"The task force you sent to neutralise the woman and her accomplices has been annihilated."

That got him to look up from his game. "...Annihilated?"

"Yes. We're still piecing together the events, but it appears the task force succeeded in eliminating a local radical group, but were in turn slaughtered by… something."

Sarah removed a stack of photographs from her clipboard to hand to her leader, "These are from the preliminary investigation."

Telgrim thumbed through the various images of the dead and the destroyed, while his subordinate continued speaking.

"The girl matching the description of your APB was reported being at the scene, but we haven't found her body. It's likely she survived."

"It appears that way… and this damage… this _circle…_" Telgrim whispered harshly, standing up as he stared at a photo showing a pattern on a basement floor. "Of course, she managed to live long enough to summon a Servant."

Sarah was never quite sure why Telgrim used different terms at different times when he spoke of the same things, but she knew he was referring to the familiars the Security Bureau used, such as the giantess. Speaking of which…

"If she's armed with such, we can send out your own, sir?"

"That'll be up to me," Telgrim countered, before sitting down heavily. He put both hands on his desk, reasserting his grip on the world. "Using Berserker right now is the wrong course of action and will send the wrong message. She'll break half the city looking for our fugitive. No - send out the Special Team with the lesser familiars and their support vehicle. The girl only has one Servant, no matter how good it is. I'll bury her in numbers."

* * *

A Servant.

A veneration of a human being, coated in the amber of history and set upon a throne outside time and space. Never aging, always peaking. A bright light so awe-inspiring and incomprehensible that their return to the physical plane could only be allowed by pouring a fragment of their being into one of seven containers.

O had the fealty of such a being, who could tear men apart with her strength alone, leap great distances, and command water, not even speaking of whatever other skills had been appended to her class.

This was a figure of legend.

And O's first order was to help bandage her wounds. It was laughable.

"Ah, it's no big deal, Master," her Saber remarked candidly, as she circled clean strips of cloth around the wounds around O's legs, as the latter sat, her one arm hiking up the skirt so that her slashed white legs were exposed. "I'm a veteran, so I've done my part in the past patching up brothers-in-arms when the fighting is done. All hands on deck, right?"

"It's a sorry start, all the same," O said, somewhere between observing and apologetic.

Obviously, the two had run for it after Saber's summoning. In a strange bout of inspiration, O directed them to the edge of the city, where the nearby storm wall raged. The once posh department store they were holing up in was probably quite a sight in the day. The ground floor had a sumptuous grand staircase that served as an appetiser for the rest of a shopper's experience, with every floor onward dedicated to all sorts of upper class commodities. Several floors upwards were dedicated showrooms full of dressed mannequins, another full of trinkets, and a top-floor restaurant.

Of course, now it was pried free of nearly everything of value. The oak furnishings had been pulled from the walls and bannisters, the mannequins stripped naked, all the furniture carried away, the food and the cutlery taken… even the children's section lay empty, an implication that bothered O to a degree.

Ordinarily, the deserted building would have had its very air flooded with dust, making breathing an exercise in agonizing asphyxiation, but one floor had doubled as a jewellery store. Some gems had been taken, but common sense had won out at some point in the past, and the looters who descended upon the building understood that the end of the world paid no value to pretty baubles.

Filling a diamond with prana made it a quick and dirty core of a bounded field that pushed out all the dust in the air, letting her breathe easy for a little while. Doubtless the thing would crumble in a matter of hours, given how badly tuned it was, but O knew this wasn't the time to complain about quality.

The magus herself had to spend several minutes on a dusty counter, her bleeding legs dangling to avoid rubbing her wounds on anything, while her Saber astralised and snuck out in order to return with a case full of medical supplies.

While the Saber bandaged her Master, the two traded information, as much as they were willing to give.

"So, you've called me to some foreign country, except it's been squished all tiny like so it's no bigger than Kyoto, and it's still shrinking unless you can find something that belongs to the local head, huh? He's an ass, right?"

"You killed his men, if that's any metric you can work with," O grunted as her Saber cinched the last bandage tight, before pacing off, fingers wrapped around her chin.

"Well, I'm no stranger to dealing with the aggressor, though all said, it's a bit strange for me to be the big fish. I'm more used to being picked on and winning against the odds, but here, I just totally wiped out all the _ashigaru_…"

"Don't worry, our enemy also has a Servant. She's quite formidable looking, if it will make you feel better," O dryly replied, though it was enough to return an assuring thumbs up from her Saber. She was getting a sense of what sort of person the swordswoman was, despite the brutal slaughter she had carried out.

Really, at this point, O was cataloguing every detail her Servant was giving away, in order to work towards an educated guess about the Saber's true identity. Partnerships with Servants were tenuous things. Having Command Spells was in itself implicit proof that an all-powerful legend made flesh wasn't necessarily going to be in the mood to listen to some pissant human ordering him or her around. She remembered… she remembered someone periodically regaling her with stories of his own association with a Caster-class Servant, as well as examples of other participants in a war. Sometimes it worked, and many times it didn't.

A Servant's identity was a powerful weapon, in the right cases. For the right type of paranoiac magus (that is, the successful ones), it was the basis of an insurance policy, in case the Servant wasn't being too agreeable. This was something a Servant would know, too. All O could do for now as try and learn what she could about her Saber.

That she likely hailed from Japan, that she seemed to have experience with warfare, that she was a skilled fighter, that she could manipulate water…

"Your hair."

"Hm?" Her Saber hummed, and turned to look at her summoner.

O spied the strips of blue that mixed with the greater black locks. "Do you have divinity?"

"Ah, this?" Saber laughed, and rubbed her pony tail in emphasis. "What do you think it means?"

"Usually, it's a sign that a Servant's lineage includes a god," O cautiously suggested. Saber just chuckled at that.

"That'd be nice, but naw. Still, you probably worked out I'm from Japan, right? It shouldn't be too hard to figure out the source of my sanctity."

"I see." O hoped the question was a playful challenge, rather than backtalk. Fair was fair, though, it was perhaps too soon to ask those sorts of questions. So O simply put it to the side, candidly asking, "And you weren't historically recorded as a man, correct?"

Saber nodded in understanding. "Oh, yeah - that does seem to happen a lot, doesn't it? Well, no worries, they certainly didn't make that one where I was concerned!"

"Well that's a relief," O smirked. "I'll need some help getting changed out of these rags," she said, gesturing towards her skirt and jacket. Both were covered in various tears from the explosion earlier. Given she was essentially a fugitive now, it was best she found something that didn't exclaim 'had been in battle for survival'.

"Lucky you, I saw something in a backroom when I was zipping around here," Saber said with her own grin, as she pointed a thumb backwards over her shoulder. "Looks like it got overlooked."

* * *

Hotel Lotus wasn't quite a hotel anymore, though its service kept acting like it was. In that way that was endemic to society, it was a congregating place for those who were once incredibly wealthy and currently still as abjectly useless in function as they were before they were trapped in this strange America. Here, they hid, eating assorted bird livers and drinking bubbly alcohol, while hoping they were still important people.

The illusion of prestige was still strong, though. The obscurity of the building helped keep the lobby clear for the most part, and free to be occupied by just a few wicker chairs and low tables, while white marble floors and columns kept the place bright and airy, so long as one did not look out the window.

Behind the hotel's front desk was a man named Harold Farrington, a decently groomed young man with a relatively clean maroon uniform. His duties as concierge were technically functional, but really were more vestigial these days. Most days, the hotel's residents rarely ventured down to the lobby, remaining holed up in their rooms or the service rooms peppered around the place. Farrington, Lotus's front yard guard dog, hence had little else to do than listen to the radio, and the government blathering on about how nice they were.

Since yesterday, the airwaves had gone nonstop about a major insurgency that had been put down. There had been survivors, however, who were armed and extremely dangerous. Some chinawoman and a hag, given the way the only identifying mark given was her hair colour. It honestly sounded like something out of a pulp rag - "Baba Yaga and her Yellow Devil". Of course, the odds of a bad magazine being in the Lotus was next to nothing, not even speaking of runaway revolutionaries. So it was that Harold Farrington paid little attention otherwise to such reports, and remained bored of his job. Still, for a roof and a seat at the hotel kitchen, standing around, being bored was worth it.

Even if no one came. Though oddly enough, a new body sauntered onto the disused steps of the hotel.

"I need accomodations," She simply said, and it was enough to get Farrington almost slipping in his chair before rising up, to drink in this rare sight. As a lone man in a marble sea, a human face was welcome, and a pretty one moreso.

Her black skirt and boots were highlighted by a red belt that had a tail dangling off her hip like a rope, and she wore a white shirt that was subtly highlighted by gold piping, though it was all swamped by a great coat that didn't quite hang off her body properly. It was a shame. With the right coat, it really would have showed her off properly instead of all but hiding her frame. Still, it played off her white white-brimmed hat that she had piled all her hair underneath. It really showed off her neck. All told, her clothes were a strange combination of expensive, yet outdated, in a way that provided maximum comfort and little notice. She looked for all the world like a delusional princess trying to hold onto her dignity.

Of course, it wasn't like Farrington was ogling. He was being a respectable concierge and making proper eye contact. Yes.

"O-Oh, absolutely," he stammered, and pushed over a record book. The woman leaned over, reached out a slinky arm and put down her name.

Heloise D'arcy Beaumont. What a name.

"W-well, if you have any luggage, I can call for someone to carry it? I mean, not that many people these days have much…"

"I'll carry it myself," Beaumont said, and raised a sack, barely bigger than a purse. It was a sad bag, but he couldn't blame her for finding her way here with little.

"Just one other thing, I'll need some collateral for your stay."

The woman's brows narrowed, and her lips pursed in this fascinating way. "Is that so?"

"Money's becoming less useful, but our hotel accepts contributions of food and drink, of a certain quality, so…"

"It's no problem," Beaumont simply said.

"What do you mean?" Farrington asked. His paranoia began acting up, as he wondered if the woman was going to draw a gun on him, like something out of a detective novel. But those worries passed the moment he found himself falling into her yellow eyes.

"There's been arrangements," She insisted, and Farrington knew she had to have been correct.

"Truly."

"There's been arrangements," She repeated. "Just let me in as a guest, and look after my needs. It will be alright."

"If you say so," the concierge agreed, and swallowed to keep his rising fascination at bay. "I'll show you to your room, then. We still have some wonderful suites available to our finest guests."

* * *

O fell back onto the bed in her suite and felt her back scream in a combination of agony and relief. The paranoia of being observed, whether by the Security Bureau or perhaps by some local would-be mugger had dogged her, but the rich clothing was all available, and it gave her enough of a disguise to let her approach the first well-to-do establishment she had stumbled across.

For now, she was making a lunge towards the city's hypothetical centre, and the Empire State Building was more a monolith now, rather than a curiously tall rectangle on the horizon.

O turned her head to look across the satin sheets, out the glass doors to the balcony, over the railing overlooking the open central courtyard, the soiree below, and onwards to that tower that was her objective.

"Bwuh-bleh? What is this? It's gross!"

O pushed herself up to sit cross legged and saw her Saber reel back from a bottle she had taken a swig from, which was part of the meal O had ordered sent up. The label was expensive and had been still in operation in the year 2016 (what did that even mean?).

"Fermented grapes, with a gas added to it. It's a prestigious sort of alcohol from Europe," the magus explained, as she watched her Servant walk about. It seemed she was the sort to fidget with her whole body. Staying astralised must have been an annoyance.

"It's official. You Westerners are weird," Saber said, face scrunched as she held up the bottle and read the French. "Sake is clear and straightforward, but apparently you people drink liquid burps or something."

"You'll have to make do."

Saber chortled in a combination of amusement and resignation, and slid into a chair, while kicking up her feet on a glass table in the large room and pulling her sword free to let it stand against the arm rest.

"So, what's our next move?"

"I'm not entirely sure," O admitted, but nodded her head out the window. "But sooner or later, you'll have to fight her, I think."

Saber followed her master's gaze and saw the shape of a gigantic girl patrol the streets of the city from between two buildings before she went out of view. She whistled.

"Not that I'm scared of her, but it would be bad tactics to match brute force with that, especially since I'm a Saber. Finesse can't match up against raw strength all the time - especially when that strength can flatten a city. To be honest, I think I would make a better Rider or Caster in retrospect. Not that I'm a wimp with a sword, but you don't sink a ship with an oar."

"Fair enough," O accepted. At this point, she was running blind. She suspected that someone of her pedigree would have been railing at taking suggestions from a 'mere' summon, but all the girl knew was that Saber was a seasoned warrior.

"I honestly think she's using her Noble Phantasm all the time," Saber added, "And well, unless you want me to suck you dry..."

"What do you want, then?" She asked instead.

"If we're going to be fighting that big thing, I'd probably want to team up with as many other Servants as possible. Splitting its attention is going to keep us more alive in the long run."

O frowned in thought. "You're not expecting me to summon another Servant, are you? There's a reason why Masters rarely maintain more than one."

Saber's own eyebrow quirked, "Really? But I'm not holding back on my link, and you're certainly not feeling bothered by it. You should have plenty of power to spare."

The silver haired girl blinked, surprised. Saber hadn't been holding back? But even after the two spells she had cast… she still wasn't feeling any encroaching exhaustion, or the burning of circuits being taxed.

"I'll… consider it," O quickly excused, pretending that her sudden thought about a second Servant was all that had been on her mind.

"You could always kill that Servant's master," Saber suggested. "Of course, whether we can get around her, plus storm the castle at the same time…"

"It's not something we can do with just the two of us. We'll need more help just to handle the fake government's army."

"Who do we ask, though?" Saber pondered aloud, more to feed O's train of thought than anything, and the magus eventually came upon one idea.

"The insurgents at the warehouse we left learned about Servants from an underground figure, someone called The Spider."

"'Ruling from the centre of his web of power'!" Saber laughed. "So inventive."

"Truly," O agreed. "If he - or she, I suppose - is willing to take something stolen from Polis Telgrim and sell it to his enemies, we might find common ground with them."

"If you can find them, though."

"We'll have to start somewhere. We're in a hotel full of rich and bored people. Someone might talk," O said, before falling back onto her bed and closing her eyes. "For now, I'll hope I can at least have six hours to not think about anything. Saber, turn off the lights."

The Japanese girl rolled her eyes. "Seriously?"

"I'm flesh and blood. Please attend to my mortal needs. Why, I could die in my sleep without enough rest."

"Fine, but bet that this will blow up in your face later," Saber sniffed, and looked for the switches for the lamps.

* * *

"Master!"

Saber screamed into O's ear, jolting the magus awake at the same time the darkness of the room was pierced by a shaft of light emanating from the front door being kicked in.

Though her senses and awareness were not entirely roused, O still managed to roll off the bed, and conveniently into Saber's arms. A complaint on the bridal carry, as she wasn't exactly a damsel in distress, only wound up sliding down her throat as O was swung about so that Saber could sprint for the open balcony doors.

Over her Servant's shoulder, O saw a misty, shadowy caricature of a man storm into the room, and raise a rifle at the escaping pair.

"Damn it," O swore.

She probably had only managed three hours at this point.


	6. America 5: Stand and Declare War

A/N: I'm aware of certain developments in the source game. I've decided is should not affect my own narrative, unless this story somehow lasts long enough to hit Part 2. That will be a question for another time.

Apologies for the late writing, given the word length compared to the time taken to write it.

* * *

If the third time was the charm, O decided she no longer saw any of it in the existence of firearms. The wretched contraptions had done nothing but try to kill her all this time - and they had taken Felicity from her. If the magus had her way, she'd never look at those stupid metal-plastic-wood things again.

As Saber kicked off from the balcony, she somersaulted once, looking underneath her at the shadow taking aim, while water spilled forth from her feet. With her legs swinging upwards, another wall rose. The bullets that came their way burrowed into the liquid barrier, fighting their way through, but it was slowed just enough for Saber and her Master cargo to drop down while the rounds whistled over their heads.

The two landed in the inner courtyard of Hotel Lotus, and their abrupt arrival was met by the astonished gasps of what seemed to be partygoers in a wide array of expensive suits and dresses. Most of them simply stared, but from the crowd, a waiter carrying a tray of drinks looked upon them and spoke, balking indignantly at the new arrivals.

"This is a refined establishment, ma'am, we do not just jump off-"

Saber ignored him and took off running, just as the server's head exploded. Keen warrior instincts took hold and the chaos that suddenly erupted about her almost seemed to fade into the background as she darted towards the wall ringing the hotel. Around her people screamed in horror and ran for the cover of a roof, dropping food, drink, or just themselves, as more bullets rained down, all tinted with the presence of a black wispiness. Whatever they were, they killed unlucky bystanders all the same, punching yawning holes in the partygoers broadly around the escaping fugitives as the pursuing gunner fired indiscriminately.

O, looking over Saber's shoulder, could only inwardly curse and hate the warlord running this strange world, for once again being callous and sloppy about everything - wasting lives and resources out of sheer lack of effort, if the new enemy indicated anything.

Saber half-jumped, half-rode a new crest of water pooling around her legs that propelled the two of them neatly up and over the wall quick enough to begin running for their lives, while using the stone for cover. This was the first time O really recognised she was running for all she was worth, and her single arm pumping up and down through the air threatened to throw her off balance.

Above them the night sky continued its sickly mixture of void, dust orange and the light pollution of the city's evening.

"What was that?" Saber called out, more annoyed than anything. "I'm not calling that a Servant. That's like pissing into a kettle and calling it tea!"

"It's probably a Shadow Servant," O faintly responded, reciting new information that surged to the forefront of her mind. "A weaker wraith that forms from a number of circumstances… most often flawed summonings."

"We're being attacked by a knock-off? A _broken _one, at that?!" Saber blurted, bristling. "I'm insulted! I'm ready to go back there and open its asshole up to its neck!"

"Not around people, Saber!" O called back. "I won't get more bystanders killed because of us!"

"Fine, but when do we take it out? If we keep running, we'll keep letting the enemy dictate our battles!"

O glanced back at her Servant, her expression firm. "We just need to find somewhere that isn't filled with people!"

Saber gestured with a hand, bewildered, ponytail flowing behind her as she ran. "Master, we're in the middle of the city! We can't just run to the edge while-"

Saber noticed something huddled on the roof, and immediately rushed to throw her arms around her Master and send them leaping to the side as a singular heavy round smashed into the pavement where the one-armed amnesiac had just been.

The two rolled across the ground until they halted. From the ground, O looked past her Servant's shoulder again, while Saber, atop her, twisted to look up. Both saw a warped figure again, though its silhouette seemed different for some reason. But one thing that could easily be made out was the long rifle it was pressing against its shoulder, the lever of which it worked to eject a casing and prepare to fire again.

"Another…" O murmured in recognition, before she felt her back become soaked with water. Water spilling from Saber's palms and knees turned into a momentary torrent that suddenly thrust her and her Servant sideways into an alley. The moment they slid to yet another halt, Saber was on her feet, dragging her Master up by her arm to send them running under the cover of the narrow alley. It was her turn to glance back now, and she shot her Master a look of frustration.

"Your perfect battlefield doesn't exist here, Master! One of us will die before then!" Saber remarked, as they jumped over abandoned crates and discarded refuse. Eventually the alley opened up into…

The city centre.

O and her Servant ran several steps, across the sidewalk, until they stumbled to a halt in the middle of the stone-paved street running through the area. A few car horns honked indignation as they narrowly passed the pair by, and all around them, the buildings were covered wall to wall in blinking advertisements.

O looked around her. Throngs of men, women and children walked past, some so inured to their daily lives they did not notice, and an equal number who turned from their nightlife to look at the two who so suddenly flaunted their definition of ordinary.

A thousand Felicities, families to Felicities, or Felicities with families, all growing within gun range, and no matter how hard O ran…

She hissed, feeling a cloying dizziness grow at the thought of being party to more death, regardless of her culpability in it. Such a waste. Such sloppiness. Such callousness. A lack of nobility in action.

"Master."

O turned too look at Saber, whose expression was forthright, as if she was looking at only one thing.

"No matter where we go, we'll be dragging people into this fight. As long as we and the enemy are here, there's going to be a battle somewhere."

O exhaled, resigned, as she mutely looked about the square. "We have to finish this fight."

"Any way you want, but it's time to push back, Master."

O's Saber held out a sack, which tinkled with the gems they had taken earlier.

"Just tell me how to win. I'll do it."

The white-haired amnesiac glanced at the teeming crowds surrounding her. No matter its necessity, she had to do what she could to limit the damage. The beginnings of a plan were developing in her mind as she reached into the bag to pull out a handful of precious stones.

"Saber, if you're so confident in your abilities, then your Master commands you: Destroy that mockery without endangering the civilians. Limit yourself in this regard."

The Japanese warrior stuck her tongue out, dog-like with a playfully vicious cheer. "I will show you how much I can do with so little."

O nodded, trusting. She clutched her gems close to her, glinting in the light of the metropolis, and pushed energy into them, uncaring of their fragility under the strain. She focused, searching for the right sort of magecraft. What she wanted always seemed to come under reflex and need, and this time she decided to push for something more elaborate.

For the enemy that was coming for her, she would hold her neck out, in the hopes the others around her would not be targeted. Were her spells strong enough to fight bullets?

She didn't know, but suddenly she felt the words spilling from her mouth, telling her this is how she should see the world, the way it was weaving prana into stone, the way she knew immolation.

"Stars. Cosmos. Gods. Animus."

O threw the stones into the air as they grew bright and began to crumble, turning into fine dust that mixed with the choking sand smothering the air.

Everyone not already fixed on the strange appearance of the foreign pair turned to watch the unexpected flare of light. Because of that, some of their backs were turned to the alley O and Saber had exited from. In a moment, they went flying, rammed out of the way by a human-shaped mist that took one look at its quarry before raising its long gun at the two, uncaring of anything else.

Saber merely half turned, smirking as she pried her sword free from its scabbard. Water began beading from her.

"Princess of the Sea, Twelfth Form-"

The Shadow Servant opened fire, the muzzle flashing spectral purple flame and a barrage of rounds accompanied by screams of bystanders, the salvo sharply cut down by Saber's cry.

"-Carp Challenges the Dragon!"

The water had been streaming off Saber, and leaking into the stones around her feet for this moment. A geyser of water blew the street apart, sending stones into the sky. Many of the cobblestones moved at the right upward trajectory to perfectly block the bullets fired by the Shadow Servant. Even as the water was rising into the air, the pillar split in half to admit Saber, who leapt through, sword pulled back around her to slash at the humanoid shade.

Though it was a lesser familiar, it was still tough enough to raise its automatic rifle to intercept the downwards chop, and let the blade lock against the guns' protruding magazine.

Saber wasn't sure what sort of figure the shade was based on, but through the smoke and haze, she could make out something akin to a military uniform, not unlike those of the American soldiers she dealt with earlier in the day.

While worthy of note, it was not enough to catch Saber off guard when she saw the masculine silhouette take a hand off its rifle to pull a handgun from its side to point it at her face. In a blur, she wrenched herself out of the way, twisting at the hip in a fashion awkward enough that the Shadow Servant was able to throw the sword off him. As she spun, the water in the air began pulling itself towards the tip of her sword, solidifying in a large roiling sphere that she brought down one handed at the lesser familiar.

Saber, however, was too far out of position to prevent the soldier Servant from rushing past and narrowly missing the hammer of water that smashed the ground behind him. Even as the Japanese girl skidded back to her feet, the enemy had already made enough ground that she would be the few vital seconds too late to catch up.

"Master!" Saber could only call out in warning, as she chased all the same. But O remained rooted, defiantly staring the shade down where she stood.

The smoky ghost didn't take the time to transition back to his main weapon, and merely thrust out his sidearm to fire it at O's face.

The bullet left the barrel, reached an inch, and was promptly shot down, the soft lead round punching a hole in the stones.

The shade didn't bother doubting what it was doing, as it continued to empty its magazine on O, with each bullet being intercepted just like the first. Each time it fired, burning debris fell from the sky with enough force to punch the bullets out of the way.

The dust storm surrounding this pseudo-continent threw grit thousands of feet into the air, enough to choke out the stars in the sky. But that meant there was plenty of material floating in the air for O to use. They weren't stars, or even really meteors, but it was grains free for O's prana to infuse and send falling out of the sky like they came from space.

It was strange she would turn to this particular spell, but she didn't have time to even wonder. Burning dust was fine for bullets. Not so much for the Shadow Servant, who had dropped its pistol, and now was bringing its rifle to bear, the abstract weapon now projecting a long, sword-like bayonet along its underside. It, combined with the Servant's raw strength, would easily punch through anything O could conjure in the next few seconds, and tear her apart.

It had absolutely no tactical awareness.

"Saber."

Water rushed towards the shade from behind; at its tip, the Japanese Servant's glistening sword. Saber was too fast to perceive, almost a blur being carried by the torrent around her legs, and the Shadow Servant had no time to attack the Master or even turn around to defend itself.

Still sensing the immediate danger despite this, the Shadow Servant tried to spin around, bringing its bladed club about to hack off the Japanese girl's head.

For the Servant of the Sword, however, little was needed to retaliate. Drawing her sword back, Saber merely let her katana intervene with the rifle's path to her neck. The gun slid along the side of the sword as Saber drew both upwards and past above her head.

The rifle's swing was thrown clear of Saber's body, the misty soldier-wraith's arms outstretched in the air, as were the Japanese girl's, hands wrapped around a sword raised to the side and above her head.

In a single vicious downwards stroke, Saber opened the enemy's chest, from the shoulder and out the hip on the opposite side of the body. The strings on the Servant, figurative or magical, snapped, leaving it to collapse on the ground as it began to dematerialise.

O looked at the dissipating wraith, and up at her own.

"And now for the other-"

A rifle roared in the distance, and by instinct, O felt the dust in the air smelt together and harden, trying to form layered barriers for the supernatural bullet that tore through air and shields with ease. It was only enough to deflect the course of the shell, and O heard it keenly whistle past her ear, before the sound of tearing meat and agonised screams came behind her.

O turned behind her to see people scrambling away from a man who was lying on his back, clutching a fresh stump on his shoulder that was spilling blood every which way.

The amnesiac turned back around, features contorted in simmering disgust. Following the arc of the bullet, she looked at the roof of a building across the street. Between the shining signs and loud neon advertisements pitching things she was not even sure the realm had, the mist of the second sniping Shadow Servant could be made out, barely, mingling with steam exhaust exiting roof vents.

O pointed at it, and hissed. "Saber, kill it."

On cue, the water picked up the Servant, holding her aloft for a second before thrusting her at the roof. Saber went airborne, bereft of water for a second before it all began chasing after her in various individual and converging streams.

In the air, Saber could make out the Shadow Servant more clearly. This one was more feminine, with a simple, utilitarian dress and a cowboy hat. It likely was sourced from America's legends, like the other. At the same time she saw it, it also spied Saber above, and they moved as one.

Conducting with her sword, the Japanese Servant directed all the water she had collected into a column she sent hurtling towards the wraith, while it was chambering another round and aiming upwards at her.

The air warped as an overpowered rifle shell drilled its way towards the Japanese girl. It wasn't something that was stopped by O's fake meteors. Would her water be enough?

But Saber was a Servant. A real one, and she wasn't going to be frightened by the parameters of some half-formed budget spirit, no matter how cautious her Master had been a little while before. She wasn't going to shy away from this phantasm.

The two collided, and the bullet sank into the waves for just an instant before the entire bubbling shape exploded from the force. Below, onlookers began scrambling for shelter from the rain. O, however, stood her ground, looking up with rapt attention even as the water fell towards her.

Saber let gravity take hold while she angled her body to dive towards both her enemy and the bullet still coming her way. It was still blindingly fast, and Saber distantly suspected that it would hurt her plenty if it even connected. Yet it had also been hampered slightly by the water it had slammed into. It was slower, just ever so slightly, just a little less than before.

For a Saber, in a vessel properly called forth by a proper Master, it was a difference enough in her eyes, and more importantly in her reflexes. She instinctively adjusted her flight path and her posture, lifting herself upwards just so, with just enough speed that she could feel the enemy's attack skim underneath her. The path was clear.

The wraith was working the lever on its gun, and tried to fire again, but Saber had closed the distance in an instance, waist cape and ponytail fluttering wildly behind her. The Japanese girl slammed down onto the roof, one foot pushing the barrel of the Shadow Servant's rifle into the gravel, while she drew her sword back to slash.

The misty Servant, with its vague feminine figure, pulled back with a surprising show of strength, dragging its rifle across the ground with Saber's foot along for the ride. O's Servant merely used her sudden surge forward to add more force to strike as she lashed out. The Shadow Servant raised an arm, desperately trying to protect itself, and sacrificed the limb as the blade cut it to the bone. Metal was pinched by metaphysical marrow, and was trapped in place, and the two stood off like that, struggling for a moment.

Saber, however, had little time or patience for such things.

"Seventh Form: Plum Rain Mountain River."

It was a quiet intonation, followed by water running up along the flat of the Servant's sword. It was first a trickle, then a flow, and finally a vicious foaming white, rushing with unbelievable pressure. The arm the sword was lodged in disintegrated in moments, torn asunder beneath churning rapids travelling along the length of the blade.

The Shadow Servant let go of its rifle in one last attempt to create breathing room as it jumped back, but it was too late. The liquid curled and whipped around Saber from where it projected from the sword, and the girl spun in place, one arm lashing out to send the length of water sweeping across the roof. It slammed into the retreating Shadow Servant's side, where it not so much cut through it than it did saw and grind the meat connecting its two halves apart, elbow shattering and crumbling to send a forearm spinning through the air, while the torso was shredded completely.

Fragments of the shade hit the roof with muted squelches as illusory organs spilled out from its body cavity for a moment, before it, too, began fading away.

O listened to the sounds of violence fade, leaving everyone around her in a tense and uncertain silence. Before long, she saw her Saber drop from the building above to land before her, while the crowds were quick to back away from the force of nature that had descended amongst them.

The Japanese girl neatly sheathed her blade, yet her eyes darted about the square, expression guarded - and her hand remained on the hilt of her sword.

"Master... this was too easy."

O understood what her Servant was saying. If her enemy had any sense, they would have never turned to Shadow Servants in an open fight against a real one. That is, unless they were judging the loss in power against its prana costs. The conclusion she reached was simple enough.

"There will be more coming, then."

Saber nodded. "That's how it usually goes in war. Probably looking to wear us out with a nonstop fight...plain old attrition. What now?"

O rubbed her chin, trying to guess her opponent's next move. Given they weren't being drowned in Servants, she assumed they would be sending Saber's enemies out two at a time, over and over. It didn't seem practical to call them forth from the Empire State Building and make them cross the entire distance from there to her. Not only that, would they be able to follow complex instructions? Would they need an overseer? If not a magus, at least someone with a workaround, like a False Attendant spell.

"The source of these Servants is likely somewhere outside. We need to last long enough to find it and break it. Can you keep fighting them off?"

Saber scoffed, amused. "If they're all like this, and I don't need to worry about you? I'd probably sooner stop for dinner than anything else."

O nodded her approval, and suddenly found herself turning to the crowds around her. An abrupt burst of inspiration and perhaps spite hit her, and she called out to all who would listen as the civilians that remained watched with trepidation.

"People of this land, I tell you here and now! I am the enemy of this realm, and of the man who controls it, Polis Telgrim! Oppose us, avoid us, or join us, I care not. One way or another, I will be toppling this toy empire of his."

Whoever listened, would, and O left it at that. After picking up her discarded bag of gems, she stalked away with her Servant, uncaring as the crowds parted for her. Whoever would come, let them. Even if the entire city was the battlefield, O would decide what the collateral damage would be, not those fools out for her.

She was not afraid. Far from it. Every move Telgrim made, he revealed more of what sort of man he was, and now O felt new confidence in victory - as long as she held out.


End file.
